


Monachopsis

by Pemm



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2018-05-26 03:31:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 40
Words: 43,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6221908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/pseuds/Pemm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b><i>monachopsis,</i></b> n. — the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place.</p><p>A street brawl in Boston's West End forces two contractual enemies into each other's lives off the clock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1: RED & 2: BLUE

**Author's Note:**

> With all my love to Tea, the filthy enabler that she is. This is her fault.

 

 

  

##  **_BOOK I:  
_** DOES IT TROUBLE YOUR MIND  
THE WAY YOU TROUBLE MINE? 

 

 

 

## 1\. BLUE

It is a blistering, sticky-hot Sunday morning when the Scout drags the guy he’s been kicking the shit out of upright from the ground again and slams him back against the brick alley wall beneath the fire escape. Maybe that’s the problem, the heat. If it wasn’t so hot, his hands wouldn’t be so sweaty. He would have been soaked even if he wasn’t in the middle of a fight, his dishwater blond hair is plastered to his forehead and sweat is dripping off his chin. Even his palms are drenched in sweat, though, and when the other guy throws his arms up in front of his face to protect himself the Scout’s well-aimed punch glances off the meat of his forearm and slides sideways, giving a very brief and intense introduction of his knuckles to the brick wall.

Skinned knuckles, smarting hand. It feels like the time he’d tried to punch the BLU heavy. He has done that exactly once. He sprained his entire hand in the doing. The pain shoots up his arm right up to his jaw and he spits out curses like loose teeth.

It’s the pain and the shock that takes him out of it, out of the rising haze of fury. It shakes him free just long enough to look at the guy he’s got up against the wall, ginger kid, who’s just now lowering his arms. He’s got a black eye and a bloody nose from beating down the Scout’s friends already. Good fighter, at least, and truth be told the Scout didn’t give a shit what the fight was over so long as he got to get in on it. But what the Scout sees, really, actually sees, as his opponent swipes at the blood under his nose, stops him in his tracks. He sputters.

“You’re—you’re that damn BLU!”

Blood smears the other guy’s forearm and a huge patch of his upper lip, but the main thing the Scout notices when he lifts his gaze to meet his own is how blue his eyes are.

 

 

 

 

## 2. RED

It was bad enough that the Scout had to find his way around three blocks of construction. Nobody even was working construction today, it was too damn hot. And it was bad enough that he still didn’t know his way around this particular section of Boston quite so well as he would’ve liked—not the way he knew Southie. But he didn’t damn well dare show his face around Southie anymore, so. _And_ it was bad enough, too, that he’d had to be out in this heat to begin with.

So the fact he’d gotten lost in an unfamiliar part of West End, wandering an alley on his way to just figure out where the damn bank was, was just perfect. And when he’d heard a bellowed _hey, bogtrotter, get outta here!_ , well. It wasn’t like he was going to take it lying down.

The Scout had stopped cold, rooted himself, looked over his shoulder. Two—no, three assholes, sitting with their legs dangling off the fire escape just behind him. He turned, rocked back on his heels, and considered them for a moment. Three? Three wouldn’t be so bad. He folded his arms over his chest and said, in his best exaggeration of his father’s accent: “Sure enough, lads, why not come an’ make me then?”

Wasn’t enough to just _look_ Irish to these jokers, and the Scout definitely looked the part. Ginger, all pale and freckles, thanks again to dad. No, he had to make them mad, had to really get them riled up. Angry people fought stupid, and stupid fighters were easy to take care of. The fake accent always seemed to do it.

It worked, anyway. Ugly sneers from two of them as they slid off the fire escape. The third, blond to his two friends’ brown hair, followed shortly after; no malice in his face, but the Scout didn’t—couldn’t—really give a damn about whether or not he was another racist bastard or not. He dropped his arms and flashed them a grin. “Oh, aye, suppose you lot _would_ need three men t’so much as leave a scratch on me.”

One of the three threw a clumsy right hook, and the gloves were off.

It was an old dance, the side-steps and the careful ducks and the minimum amount of blows necessary to end the fight. The Scout did not screw around, he could not afford it. One went down with a blow to the jaw, the next with a knee to the gut. Fast, efficient, just as he’d learned. You got a lot more interested in taking guys out fast when the punishment for not doing so was a painful death.

The Scout twisted to face the third and the only thing he saw was stars. The pain of the left hook that had connected with his nose followed shortly after, and then _he_ was down.

A rain of blows. Painful, yeah, but nothing on getting a kukri through the stomach. Even so, he was not built to survive getting hit. He’d learned this on BLU more than once already. The Scout tried to get his footing back, flung out a foot to catch the knee of the blond currently kicking his ass, and got a kick square to the ankle for his trouble. Whoever this fucker was knew what he was doing.

Then he was dragged up by the collar of his shirt, shoved roughly against something painfully hard and unyielding. Brick, scraping the back of his neck and head. On instinct he threw up his arms to protect his face, but he kept his eyes open. It was shutting your eyes that got you killed.

A blow, glancing. The blond yelped and cussed and the Scout took the opportunity to drop his arms, to wipe away the blood pouring down from his nose. To regroup.

And then this asshole looked at him. Really looked, and froze, and stared, and said something the Scout had not expected to hear in a million years.

“You’re—you’re that damn BLU!”

The Scout processed this for a tenth of a second before grabbing the guy’s hair and throwing him to the ground.

He was met by instant resistance, but it was too little too late. Blondie was taller and stronger than him, but his reaction time was a joke. Ten seconds later the Scout had him pinned. He squawked and growled and made enough noise that finally the Scout reached over from where he was sitting on the guy’s back to smack the back of his head. “Hey, chrissakes, man, shut up,” he said, and it was a relief to drop the fake accent because he always felt like a moron trotting it out, “shit an’ damn, you an’ your buddies a buncha loudmouth idiots, huh? Racist fucks, oughta knock your teeth out. Might’a, with that one guy, actually. You really on RED?”

It was sort of a funny question, in hindsight; when the Scout had dropped him, he’d smacked his face on the pavement. He had red running down a gash in his cheek.

 


	2. 3: LUNCH & 4: HERE

## 3. LUNCH

His face hurts and he’s not used to getting his ass kicked. Not out here, not in his hometown. On RED, sure, as much as the Scout might hate to admit it he’s fighting seasoned mercenaries on those jobs. Some of them have been killing people since before he was born. But here? In Boston? The last time anyone has given him much worse than a bloody nose was when he was fifteen.

He snarls something, tells the ginger bastard to get off him, and tries to follow it up by grabbing at his arm where it’s just in his line of sight. He gets smacked again for his trouble. “You gonna jump me if I let you up?” the guy asks.

“Jump you? Jump you. Jump you six friggin’ way to Sunday, _yeah,_ freakin’ asshole BLU bastard, owe you that much, that much at _least,_ knock yer stupid freckles off–”

“Haha, yeah, alright.”

This _unbearable prick._

It’s not often the Scout engages with his opposite, on the bases. Scrims at the fore of a match, maybe, ones that more often than not wind up being interrupted before they’re finished by a rocket or a burst of flame. Moving targets are hard to track to begin with, and the dickbag currently sitting on him is easily the quickest guy RED has. Easier to just run past, let Pyro or Heavy deal with him.

He tries to get up again. The ginger exhales and abruptly shoves the Scout’s face down to the searing hot pavement. “Wouldya have jumped me fer bein’ Irish if it was jus’ you, or was you just after a fight?”

The Scout has to stop a moment. Tries to remember why the fight had started. “I ain’t—what’s it t’you, anyway. Friggin’ BLU, woulda beat your dumb face in jus’ for that anyway, don’t care. Irish, whatever, who cares.”

One of his friends groans, flat on his back a few feet away. Dumbass. The Scout glares at him. Idiot, what is his name anyway? Friend of the other guy with the busted nose over over there, he thinks, the Scout had only come around to bum some smokes and get out of the house anyway. The other guy’s name is … it starts with an R, maybe.

And then the ginger is getting up, and he bounces on the balls of his feet as the Scout gets off the hot pavement. “Alright,” the ginger says, grinning, blood still leaking from his nostrils. “Alrighty, cool. C’mon, ditch these dickheads, wanna get lunch with me?”

The Scout, who had every intention of launching right back into the fight when he got up, stops. He paws at the scrape on his face and looks down at the guys on the ground.

“Yeah,” he says presently, “yeah, well, okay. Okay, sure.”

 

 

 

 

## 4. HERE

He’d needed to go to the bank, but just on account of how he didn’t want to have to run around looking for the damn thing tomorrow. The Scout didn’t much mind putting it off, in light of this new encounter. Meeting the RED team’s scout immediately took precedence.

He’d dropped his friends pretty damn quick, blondie had. Good choice in the Scout’s opinion, stupid fucks. Maybe blondie was stupid too, but near as the Scout could figure he didn’t give a damn if the Scout was a “bogtrotter” or not.

So now they were making their way through an eerily empty city street. It was too hot to breathe today, and mostly the only sound was distant traffic and their footsteps. The Scout shrugged off his shirt and balled it against his still-bleeding nose for a moment. “Name’s Lorne,” he said.

“Lorne? Lorne ain’t no name I ever heard of.”

“Well, what’s yours?”

“Ashley.”

“I got an aunt named Ashley.”

Ashley squinted at him. The Scout gave him another grin. “That’s like me havin’ an uncle named Maude,” Ashley said. “What’re you doin’ here?”

“Me? I live here, that’s what. What about you?”

“Ain’t no business’a yours, is it?”

The Scout put his hands up in surrender. “Fine, sheesh, sorry I asked. So, well, where’s good t’eat around here?”

“Thought you said you lived here.”

“Don’t mean I lived here always.”

Ashley snorted and, as they were at a corner, took a sharp left that the Scout had to scramble a bit to follow. “Sandwich place down this way,” he said as the Scout caught up. “Fries, malts, all that.”

“Know your way around pretty good, huh?” the Scout said. Ashley shrugged. “You live ’round here too?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Shit, man, was jus’ a question. Just ’cause we get paid to shoot each other some days don’t mean we gotta hate each other.”

Ashley looked at him now, and the Scout took the opportunity to properly look him over now that he wasn’t trying to punch his face in. Tall, built, tanned. Sort of a worn look to him, his clothes were ragged and kind of threadbare. Slouched. “Ain’t means we gotta be best friends either.”

“The hell did you decide t’come eat with me for?”

“Whatever, we’re here.”


	3. 5: LUCKY & 6: MANY

## 5. LUCKY

Lorne asks a lot of questions. He asks the Scout about sixteen of them between putting their orders in and getting their damn food. Mostly they are questions the Scout either does not mind answering, or ones he can brush aside with a grunt. He finds Lorne does not insist on making him answer; this is a point in his favor.

The malt shop is too crowded to sit, jam-packed with other customers looking for somewhere cool to hide. But they’re close enough to the water to warrant the walk, and so they go there. They find an empty little patch of stiff, brown grass on the waterside, shaded by a run-down old building that looks out over the river. The Scout is halfway through his sandwich and busy counting the seagulls that have been eyeing them since their arrival when Lorne reaches out and whaps his knee. The Scout flinches and looks over at him: he’s got his bloodied shirt slung over one shoulder, and he’s pale as anything. Going to get sunburned, probably. “What?”

“Just I asked how it was you got hired, you deaf?”

The Scout stifles a kneejerk sneer. “Some girl asked me if I wanted the job an’ I said yes, okay?”

Lorne snorts, and pitches a piece of crust out to the gulls. There’s a sudden fight, dozens of beating wings and squawking calls. “Nice. Real interestin’ story.”

“Dunno what else you want, maybe I don’t feel much like talkin’ about it, how’s that. How’d _you_ get hired, then? We even s’posed t’be talkin’? Figured that’s against the rules, it is on base.”

“Aw, who cares, anyway.”

The Scout is not, to say the least, the most observant person he knew. But he wasn’t born yesterday, either, and scoffs. “Yeah, you clammed up real quick, can’t even answer your own question.”

“F’gettaboutit.”

“Whatever. Hey, but, I mean. You spend a lotta time doin’ lunch with people you get into it with?”

The smile that comes over Lorne’s face is humorless. “Nah. You got lucky.”

 

 

 

 

## 6. MANY

“Look who’s talking,” Ashley said with a snort. The Scout counted to ten, slowly, in his head. Not worth it. Not worth it. And then Ashley added, “So now what?”

It took the Scout a moment to catch up. He blinked and shook himself. “I guess, I mean I dunno. If it weren’t so damn hot I’d race ya, but I ain’t runnin’ nowhere in this. Worse than the gravel pits.”

“Shit an’ damn, I hate that base. All rocks an’ sun, layout don’t make any damn sense.”

“You kiddin’? Easiest one we do. Now, Thunder Mountain, there’s a damn joke.” The Scout rustled through his paper bag, looking for leftover fries, and found nothing. He was similarly running out of conversation topics. “So c’mon, how long you been in West End? I just moved up from Southie.”

Ashley’s gaze cut to him, suspicious, searching. For what, the Scout wondered. “A while. Couple months. Know my way around, anyway.”

“Yeah? Oughta give me the tour sometime. S’weird, s’the same city but it just—Iddaknow, it ain’t Southie. Feels wrong, not knowin’ nobody.”

He trailed off, curbing himself before too much could escape. Ashely shifted, picking at grass. “You run?” he asked.

“Yeah, most days.”

“There’s a good spot for it a ways down from Third an’ Bellmont. Train yard, abandoned. Kinda small but ain’t ever nobody there.” He looked out over the river again. “Not as I’ve seen ever, anyway, an’ I go every morning.”

The Scout mulled over this for a moment, crumpling up his paper bag. “How many people you reckon live here?” he asked, eventually. “In Boston, I mean.”

“Hell, I dunno,” said Ashley. “A lot. Lot more’n I could ever count.”


	4. 7: BET & 8: BARS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content Warning(s):**   
>  _use of slur ("queers")_   
> 

## 7. BET

It was over a week later when the Scout finally padded up to the corner of Third and Bellmont. It was just after six in the morning, and a far cry from the melting heat of that day he had met the RED scout. Ashley. It would probably be uncomfortably humid later on, but right now it was perfect: gray stormclouds threatening overhead, just light enough to see, and the faintest of rain occasionally pattering on his bare arms.

He had been prepared for Ashley not to be there, given that was sort of how life worked in his experience. That was fine, he had been running alone for years anyway. But as he found his way into the trainyard, which was just as empty and forgotten as Ashley had said, he caught sight of movement in the far corner.

The Scout was off like a shot. His family had always joked that he was really a sighthound, not a human, with the way he would take off in a heartbeat after a moving target. They weren’t too far off the mark, anyway. Ashley was jogging; the Scout, moving at full-tilt, forgot for a second that he wasn’t chasing him down to put a bullet in him. He checked himself, slowed, and yelled: “Hey! Give a guy a hello, man!”

Ashley slowed just long enough to look over his shoulder. He quirked one eyebrow and turned, still at a jog, but backwards. “What, can’t keep up with me?”

“Pfft, I could beat your ass any day an’ keep goin’.”

“Yeah? Whaddya wanna bet?”

The Scout thought about it. Grinned. “Loser buys breakfast. Two laps, start at that pole. ‘Nless you’re tired already, y’know, wouldn’t be much of a win if I was takin’ advantage, I got enough advantage as it is.”

Ashley squinted at him for a moment. He slowed to a stop, and the Scout did too. “Advantage,” he said eventually. “What, you bein’ a tiny skinny bastard? That your advantage?”

The Scout had opened his mouth to respond when Ashley’s face cut into a grin, sharp and sudden. His hand shot out and connected with the Scout’s shoulder, shoving him backwards enough to throw him off balance, and in the next instant he was off and running.

 

 

 

 

## 8\. BARS

The Scout hears an ungainly squawk behind him and then the rapid pounding of feet, followed by _no fair!_ Fair nothing, fair got you nowhere. And two laps is nothing, not on home territory like this. Lorne’s never been here before, and the Scout knows better than to waste precious breath in a race.

So does Lorne, it seems like. After the initial burst there is only the sound of hard footsteps echoing off the metal ruins. The yard isn’t large. It’s only about a minute and a half before the Scout skids to a halt by the pole Lorne had indicated, and two seconds after Lorne does the same. “Cripes,” he gets out, breathing heavily, “damn, didn’t take you for a cheater.”

“Cheater, cheater nothin‘, I was makin’ things fair, Mr. Advantage,” the Scout says, smirking. “You gonna chicken out? I’m starvin’.”

“I ain’t no liar, fight you ’bout that sooner than anything.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

So, free breakfast. Company, even. The Scout can live with that.

Still, racing isn’t quite the same as a morning run. The Scout isn’t used to having anyone else around this early, and it’s a little strange, as they more properly round the yard and finish cooling down. And surprise, surprise, Lorne still doesn’t know where anything is, so the Scout leads the way to his usual breakfast spot when they’re done.

By now it has actually begun to rain, though it is still light and pleasant, and they’re more damp with sweat than with water by the time they reach the diner, the Orange Grove. The Scout gets pancakes, Lorne orders strawberry waffles, and then they’re sitting there in relative silence as they eat. The rain drums the window. The Scout is halfway through his short stack when he finally finds a question. “What took you so long comin’ down, anyway? Told you ’bout the place like a week ago.”

Lorne shrugs. “I’unno, was busy. Lotta late nights, an’ I don’t much like runnin’ after the sun’s all the way up if I can help it. Busy.”

“Busy how?”

“Busy,” Lorne repeats, suddenly cagey, and takes a savage bite out of his waffles.

The Scout snorts, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Like we got tons t’do off work.”

“Man, I got all this crap goin’ on, don’t you talk t’me about work. I moved here like a month ago, I got my landlord breathin’ down my neck over shit what ain’t my fault, I gotta figure out banks an’ electric an’ whatever, my mail, it is a pain in my ass.”

“Sounds like a blast to me.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. God. I ain’t even looked around the neighborhood, seen what’s cool. What’s cool around here? Bars, clubs? Or are you too busy runnin’ for that?”

It takes the Scout a moment to formulate his answer for this, and spends it mopping up syrup with his last strip of bacon. “Nah,” he says at last, popping it into his mouth and crunching down. “I mean, got some’a everything. Depends on what you’re after.”

“I dunno. Club stuff? Dancin‘. I am the best at dancin’.”

“Yeah, sure. Couple places ‘round here f’that. Mad Molly’s, the Wrench, got like a cowboys an’ Indians place where all the barstools is saddles. Kinda seedy, though. Cowhand, that’s the name.” He picks at the remains of his pancakes. “Four Horsemen, though, y’don’t want the Four Horsemen, trust me.”

“Why, s’a matter with it?”

“Full’a queers,” the Scout says, which is the truth. He just simply doesn’t tell Lorne that that also happens to be the Scout’s home bar.

“… Oh, well. Okay,” says Lorne, and looks outside as the rain begins to pour.


	5. 9: ROUTINE & 10: NOISE & 11: BREAK

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Content Warning(s):**  
>  _use of slur ("fag")_  
> 

## 9. ROUTINE

So now they had a routine. Running, three days a week, before the sun came all the way up. Sometimes after they’d grab breakfast and talk about nothing. They got called off to the bases, about a week later, and spent three days gunning people down. The Scout had the suspicion that Ashley was going out of his way to aim at him in particular now.

He never asked, though, because when they got back to Boston they fell right back into their routine, as if the Scout hadn’t shot Ashley in the stomach and left him to bleed out, the last time they had seen each other. Not a word. Just a nod, some surface-level chatter. The Scout was rapidly getting the idea that Ashley was keeping him at arm’s length. It was a shame. He’d really been hoping they could be proper friends, if for no other reason than he hadn’t made any in West End yet.

The Scout was gregarious, absolutely. He thrived in a group, his team loved him, because of course they did. And up until a few months ago, he’d had his family and childhood friends to come home to.

Now, well. He didn’t.

This was what was eating at him the night he decided maybe he _would_ check those bars Ashley had suggested.

 

 

 

 

## 10. NOISE

It’s Friday night and the Scout has no idea when the last time he spent a Friday night in or alone was. He can’t really remember and frankly that’s more than fine.

So it’s Friday night and still hotter than the devil’s asshole outside, and he’s right on the edge of drunk as he stumbles to a halt at the back of the line leading into the bar. He’s hopped two bars already tonight, the barkeeps goddamn love him and his huge tips. Not like he can’t afford it. It’s worth it, they keep an eye on him when he inevitably gets fucking trashed.

And he gets fucking trashed every single weekend.

He ditched the guys he came with about an hour ago, because he’s not suicidal. They’re not ignorant like that Lorne, they know about the Four Horsemen as well as the Scout does, and he doesn’t really need them finding out that’s where he spends most of his weekend.

The line for the Four Horsemen isn’t short, it never is. Best gay bar in this part of the city. It’s always packed, that’s why the Scout likes it. The lesbian bar across the street is the same deal. But the line always moves quick. He’s through the door and there it is. The _noise_.

It’s a cacophony, it’s just below a riot. Music shakes the floor, dozens of dancers yell and shout and pound their feet. Tubes of neon glow off the four statues of the bar’s namesakes, one on each wall, with Death overseeing the entrance. The Scout sinks into it like it’s water, lets the sound pound through his bones and drown out everything else. He makes his tipsy way to the bar, calls for a whiskey sour, and sinks down into his seat to stare out over the dancers.

And he’s maybe halfway through his whiskey when his eyes happen to drift over to Death’s hooves, rearing up over the doorway as if to crash down on unwelcome guests. Unwelcome guests like fucking _Lorne_ , who is standing in the entryway blinking in the neon light.

The Scout doesn’t even fucking like whiskey sours, so it’s less obnoxious than it might have been otherwise when he chokes on his mouthful and spits half of it onto the floor. Most of what remains in the glass bursts out over the bar when he slams the drink down, and it’s hardly splashed down before he’s bolted to the bathroom.

Oh, _God_ , he’s too drunk for this.

The bathroom’s got like three other guys in it. None of them are fucking this time at least, so that’s one less thing he has to worry about. Where’s the sinks? There. He twists the knob and throws cold water onto his face, as if that’s going to help him. Jesus. He has to get out of here. Does this place have a back exit? He’s never seen it, if it does. What the _fuck_ is Lorne doing here? Did he walk into the wrong bar?

He’s staring at his dripping face in the mirror when it occurs to him that maybe Lorne had ignored the Scout’s “warning” on purpose.

… He isn’t drunk _enough_ for this.

 

 

 

 

## 11. BREAK

It was loud. It was really, _really_ loud in here, but even that was sort of a relief. The Scout liked it better than the utter silence of his apartment, or the impersonal noise of the streets. Motion, energy. It was like a breath of fresh air.

It was hardly the first time he’d been to a bar, though not many of those had been dance clubs as well. It wasn’t even his first time to a gay bar, Sniper had taken him to one on their Vegas mission. First time on his own, though. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking to find.

The bartender was nice, and easy on the eyes, too, skin darker than Demo’s and a crisp haircut. He got a sidecar, and was just thinking about striking up a conversation with the guy a few seats down, just for the hell of it, when something grabbed him by the collar.

On instinct he twisted and punched. Missed, but only barely. In the insane light of the club he didn’t recognize who it was until he had thrown another, and that one did connect. Ashley’s nose crunched loud enough that the Scout heard it over the music.

Violent swearing. The Scout’s hand hurt now. Over his shoulder he heard the bartender bark something, probably he was going to be thrown out already, _Christ._ Whatever. “Goddamn, Ash, y’can’t go grabbin’ me all … Jesus, what’re you even doin’ here?”

“Mindin’ my own business, okay, or I _was_ ‘til you fuckin’ showed up, f-fuckin’ … told you not t’come here, shit, this is the fuckin’ fag bar. This’s _my_ fuckin’ bar, go … fuck. _Fuck._ ”

He was slurring. Swaying, too, clutching his nose like a kid. Lorne stared at him for a few seconds, weighing his options.

Eventually, he gathered himself enough to turn back to the bartender. It took a moment of fast talking and excuses to get him to drop the death-glare and hand him some napkins instead. Ashley was still muttering under his breath when the Scout pulled him over to the stool next to him and shoved a napkin into his face. “What the fuck?” Ashley said thickly as he took it, and goddamn if his face wasn’t half covered in blood from his nose. “What’s, what’re … g-get outta here.”

“Mop up your stupid nose, idiot.”

Ashley obeyed, surprisingly. He tried, at least. “Ow! Shit, did, you broke it! You broke my nose, you _dick._ Get the fuck outta my bar.”

The Scout stared him down for a long ten seconds before turning back to the bar and pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to go at all.


	6. 12: QUEER (1) & 13: QUEER (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Content Warning(s):**  
>  _use of slur ("fag", "queer"), abusive language_  
> 

## 12. QUEER (1)

The Scout’s hand still hurt, fifteen minutes and two shots later, when he dragged Ashley out back of the Four Horsemen and into the alleyway, pushing him against the brick wall. Ashley had not shut up for a moment, treating the Scout to a low, constant stream of slurs and halfhearted threats. The Scout had a short temper on a good night. He did not have one at all when he’d been drinking.

“Will you _shut up?_ ” he snapped, both hands fisted in Ashley’s shirt. He tried to focus on keeping them there, because if he let go someone was going to start losing blood. More blood. The front of Ashley’s shirt was still soaked with it. “Fuckin’ _God_! I can go to any damn bar I want, queer or not, willya quit  _whining?_ ”

Ashley glowered down at him. They had come to a stop beneath a single yellow bulb set in the brick wall above them. He had circles under his eyes, the Scout noticed. “… Told you not t’come here,” he said, now sounding more sullen than anything. He was still tripping over his words now and then. “Didn’t figure you was a fuckin’ fag.”

“You sure fuckin’ like that word for somebody jus’ told me to get outta _his_ gay bar. Why the hell are you so pissy, anyway, ain’t we got enough shit slung our way without bitin’ each other’s necks?”

Ashley sneered, and much quicker than the Scout would have expected his hand had shot out and grabbed the Scout by the hair. “Nobody knows I come here,” he hissed. “Got that? _Nobody_ except the guys already here, an’ they ain’t gonna act like they know me if they see me on the outside.”

The Scout snorted. “So you ain’t come out yet, what do I care. Who would I even tell? Didja forget I don’t know anybody here?”

Silence. Ashley seemed to be at a loss for an answer. He even let go of the Scout’s hair, growling under his breath. The Scout took the opportunity to push further. “Only people I would know woulda maybe been guys from the club anyway, at this rate,” he said, relaxing his grip on Ashley’s collar. “Christ, man. I don’t wanna fight you over somethin’ this stupid. So we’re both queer, we got one more thing in common.”

An instant later the Scout was curled up on the ground, wheezing, clutching his stomach where Ashley had kneed him in the gut.

 

 

 

 

## 13. QUEER (2)

Lorne is down and out. Not going to be getting up right away. Good. The Scout needs a minute, needs to try and calm his shaking hands, he’s dizzy. Blood loss. Blood all down the front of his shirt. Lorne is swearing now and it takes the Scout a moment to catch up with himself and remember why he’d floored him. When he does remember, he kicks Lorne in the side.

“You call me that again an’ I will kill you,” he gets out as Lorne yelps and curls up closer on himself. “Y, you think I’m jokin‘, you think I’m kiddin’? Call me queer again, cocksucker, do it. Try me.”

Lorne says nothing.

The Scout tries to push himself away from the wall and utterly fails. Shaky. His nose is killing him, still. He’s dizzy and his head is pounding and he’s had too much to drink. Fucking Lorne, fucking BLU prick. Oh, Christ. He’s going to fall over in a second, he’s pretty sure.

Lorne is getting to his feet, now. The Scout can’t do anything about it. He just watches as Lorne steadies himself, carefully unfolding himself. He looks pale, but maybe it’s just the light washing out his skin. He’s keeping his distance.

But then he says, “Okay,” and it’s hoarse. Lorne is grinning, why is he grinning. “You’re queer. You are gay as a fuckin’ daffodil. Bet you’re the RED team bicycle, I bet you spend all your weekends down here on your knees in the men’s room.”

The Scout swallows. His head is spinning. He can’t seem to string his thoughts together. “You—y, you—”

“Or maybe,” Lorne says, and he steps closer. Drops his voice. “I mean, hey. Maybe I’m full’a shit. Maybe you’re jus’ some sad little boy repressed as all hell tellin’ yourself you’re straight, tellin’ yourself you just come down here to laugh at all of us freaks, ‘cause you can’t stand the idea of bein’ one yourself.” And he’s right in front of the Scout again, peering up at him through narrowed eyes and a smirk. “What, man, cat got your tongue? Am I gettin’ a little too close to the mark?”

There’s a writhing, pulsing sort of feeling in the Scout’s gut, now. All the colors in the dim alleyway seem to be oversaturated, too bright, too real. Overstimulated. He stares Lorne down and wishes he didn’t feel like he was about to pass out.

“You’re pathetic,” Lorne says quietly, easily. “I fuckin’ hate guys like you, too scared to do anythin’ but make things worse for guys like me. ‘Cause I’ll tell you what, man, yeah, I _am_ a fuckin’ fag. But at least I admit it.”

There’s something on the tip of the Scout’s tongue. He can’t seem to get it out, he isn’t even sure what it is. It doesn’t matter, though, in the end; when Lorne leans in close and presses a hard, domineering kiss against the Scout’s lips, he takes whatever it was with him when he pulls away.

It would be one of only a handful of clear memories the Scout would keep of that night. That, and watching Lorne turn and walk away to disappear down the alley.


	7. 14: DOCKS & 15: TERRITORY & 16: FAMILIAR & 17: PROBLEMS

## 14. DOCKS

There’s no one in the train yard the next morning. Or the morning after that. No one, because the Scout doesn’t leave his apartment, and because he can see the yard from his apartment window and there’s no sign of Lorne at the usual time. He doesn’t think so, anyway. He stopped wearing his glasses years ago.

So Lorne has fucked off.

The Scout has no opinion on this.

He stays in his apartment for three straight days, ordering pizza and Chinese take-out, making his way through his collection of alcohol. The piles of beer bottles on the floor around the boxspring he calls his bed gets bigger. By the fourth day his entire head feels like a traffic jam and every sound is nails on a chalkboard. He leaves on Tuesday night after midnight, wired and jumpy, and he goes down to the docks.

The docks aren’t really in walking distance, but that has never stopped him. He runs the whole way, a steady jog, only fleetingly aware of the stoplights and crosswalks and the cars that slam on their brakes as he cuts in front of them. The only thing he feels is the impact of one foot hitting the pavement after the other. He reaches the docks. When he slows to a walk every part of him feels like it is about to telescope in on itself.

Saltwater. The sound of his footsteps on the ancient wood planks. The gentle slosh of the waves. He’s not in West End anymore, that’s fine. West End is worthless. This whole city is worthless.

He picks his way down the docks, looking over the different boats tied all around. They all seem like animals in the dark, or the spines of animals, sails stretching from vertebrae to vertebrae. He stops next to a sloop with no sail at all. There’s no one around. He climbs into it.

When the Scout lies down in the bottom of the boat and looks up, all he sees is darkness.

 

 

 

 

## 15. TERRITORY

There was no one in the train yard the next morning. No one that the Scout could see, anyway. It was another sickeningly hot day, muggy besides, and the sun blazed down through cracks in the threatening storm clouds overhead. The Scout wet his lips and sat down to start his stretches.

He was not sure if he was glad Ashley was not here or not. He had been tipsy and pissed off that Friday night, and he had maybe gone overboard, a little. He maybe shouldn’t have done the kiss thing. He had felt a little bad about that, in the morning. He wasn’t going to apologize for it, especially not if Ashley was going to be a baby about his territory being crossed into.

Fuck.

He was so deep in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear someone walking up behind him. Not until they planted their foot on his back and shoved him to the ground.

 

 

 

 

## 16. FAMILIAR

He’s maybe slept. The Scout isn’t sure. He had lain in the boat for a long time, he isn’t sure if he slept or if he just fell out of reality. At some point, though, he found himself walking back home, and now he’s almost there. He can see the apartment building. He can see the train yard. He can see someone in the train yard, sitting on the ground, their back to him.

It doesn’t take a genius.

His hands are shaking. He probably hasn’t slept after all. Definitely hasn’t eaten in at least twelve hours. He watches himself kick Lorne in the back, watches Lorne go down. This is familiar. This is easy. Go for the tender spots, the places where the bone is near the skin, shins, ribs. Not the face, not the head, he doesn’t want a murder charge. Lorne is curled up on the ground, shouting, or maybe the Scout is shouting, it’s hard to tell. Lorne keeps trying to get up. There’s blood on the dirt. The Scout’s nose still hurts like the fucking devil, it’s going to heal crooked. He aims a kick at the back of Lorne’s knee as he gets up on all fours and misses.

There it goes. The momentum, the inertia. The Scout staggers a bit, off-balance, and Lorne scrambles out of the way. Blood dribbles out of his mouth. His clothes are covered in dirt that is rapidly becoming mud. The Scout only realizes it has started to rain when he blinks and has to wipe the water out of his eyes.

Words. Lorne. Lorne’s talking. The Scout is suddenly too tired to do anything but listen.

 

 

 

 

## 17. PROBLEMS

The Scout can’t take a hit. Everyone on the team knew it, knew that it was often better to simply put him down rather than try to pick him back up when he got injured. A glass cannon, Spy had called him once.

Now, as rain drummed down on them, the Scout tried to swallow down whimpers and a growing need to be sick. Ashley had only gotten one or two good kicks to his gut and sides but it had been more than enough. He was reeling, and when he looked back at the other scout it took him a few seconds to put together that he wasn’t coming after him. Ashley was just standing there, staring. Glassy-eyed. He was wearing the same shirt he had on at the Four Horsemen, which the Scout only recognized due to the huge patch of dried blood splattering the front. The rain was starting to blur the edges.

His mouth opened before the rest of his brain caught up with him. “You think killin’ me is gonna make you less gay, idiot?” the Scout said, clutching his side. “You _God-damn_ dumbass. I am tryin’ to help you.”

No answer. Ashley hardly even blinked. It was—it was eerie, the Scout thought, how much he reminded him of an animal. A neighborhood dog had gotten rabies, once, when he was a kid. It had looked at him the same way Ashley was looking at him now.

He spat some blood onto the dirt and waited, weighing his options. “You are real messed up, you know that?” he said at last, when Ashley failed to react. “You are … Jesus, you got some problems, pal, don’tcha?”

Nothing, though now the Scout noticed that he seemed to be drooping. He looked exhausted. The Scout took a step closer, daring, letting loose his tongue while the wheels in his head turned. “Yeah, problems. I know about those. I know where you’re at, used t’be I was lyin’ to myself about it too. S’natural. Everybody tells us we’re s’posed to feel like freaks. I know whatcha need, pal, you need some help. You need somebody givin’ you help.”

Another step. Two. When the Scout was about two feet away Ashley seemed to come to life again, hunching into himself. “Wh … what’s. Mnm. I don’t need help.”

“You need a _lot_ ’a help.”

“I don’t … want it,” Ashley mumbled. He shied back a pace as the Scout grew bolder. “G, go away.”

Ha. Now Ashley was the one on the back foot, and the ideas just kept pouring in. The Scout layered honey and sugar into his tone, loosened his body into something more open. Friendly. God. He should’ve been an actor. “No, man, c’mon. You need it, look at you. You even changed clothes since Friday? Hell, you even know where you are? You look like you’d go an’ walk in front of a train without any idea. Where’s your place?”

“… It’s. It’s around here.” Ashley grimaced, glancing around. He was squinting. His gaze stopped on a tall, skinny building, red brick and tiny windows. “There. Over there.”

“Jus’ right there? That’s cool, man, real handy. C’mon, you look like you oughta sit down, I’ll come make sure you ain’t get hit by no cars.”

Right in front of him, now. Ashley had a good few inches on him, but height had never really been something the Scout considered to be a thing of consequence. It certainly wasn’t now. Ashley was looking at him like a deer in the headlights. He smelled disgusting, of sweat and booze. The Scout gave him a friendly smile and put a hand at his elbow, gently pushing him toward the building he had pointed out. Ashley obeyed.

It was less than five minutes’ walk to the door of Ashley’s apartment building, but by the time they got there the Scout was already having to suppress the smile growing on his face. Now he had a plan. Now he had an in. Now he had a weak spot.

This would be easy.


	8. 18: PIT & 19: GOLDEN & 20: OWED

## 18. PIT

The Scout goes up the stairs. The stairs creak the same loud way they always do, old wood threatening to one day buckle. There’s a weird echo of his footsteps, and then he realizes it is not an echo but a second set. Lorne is at his arm. Perplexed, he tries to figure out how this happened. Weren’t they outside a minute ago? Hadn’t he been kicking his ass? His nose hurts. God, he is so tired. He reaches his door and shoves it open. Unlocked.

The smell hits him and it’s enough to jar him out of his stupor. The place is rank with stale booze and garbage long overdue to be taken out. It’s fine. He’ll get used to it again in a few minutes.

There’s his bed, his boxspring. He’s been meaning to get a real one for a while, God knows he can afford it. He just hasn’t. This one’s already here. Right now it’s a nest of blankets and empty take-out containers.

Lorne is talking. “… an’ just sayin’, man, uh, kinda this is a pit. You sure you live here?”

“I’m going to bed.” The Scout doesn’t want to, not really, but he also thinks he’s probably going to fall over. He’d rather do it on the box spring.

“Jesus, okay. Uh. Mind if I stick around? You got me pretty damn good out there.”

The Scout mumbles something as he crosses to his bed and collapses onto it, but even he isn’t sure what it is.

 

 

 

 

## 19. GOLDEN

Ashley’s apartment was the single most terrifying dwelling the Scout had ever stepped foot in, and he had been inside Sniper’s van. Hell, the Scout had grown up poor and had had poor friends, but _none_ of their homes ever looked remotely like this. And if Ashley’s paychecks looked _anything_ like the Scout’s, he knew he wasn’t poor, either.

It was spartan living, to be polite about it. The only reason the place was livable seemed to be due to the fact that Ashley did not seem to own anything outside of the necessities. No books, nothing on the walls. A radio, sitting on the windowsill, at least. Clothes thrown over the radiator. The floor looked like it had never been vacuumed, and there was only the smallest trail amid all the refuse left on the floor; it snaked a path from Ashley’s “bed” to his kitchen and down a hall, to what the Scout assumed to be the bathroom.

What kind of person lived like this?

They were all questions he was left alone with. Ashley had muttered some garbled nonsense and passed out at once. He was curled into a ball on the boxspring; he hadn’t even taken his shoes off. The Scout studied him for nearly a minute, and in that minute he nearly turned around to leave, to leave his plot unincubated.

Nearly. Not quite. And this was a golden opportunity to get started.

First things first. He dug around in the kitchen until he found the trash bags, and set about dropping the garbage cluttering every surface into them. The bottles banged and clattered together; Ashley never stirred. He still hadn’t when the Scout came back from throwing them out.

Good. Damn. Now he could properly think, he couldn’t ever focus when there was a bunch of shit around. Too distracting. He sat down on the lone stool set at the card table in the kitchen and stared out the window, the wheels milling away in his head.

 

 

 

 

## 20. OWED

His eyes open. The first thing that hits him is how foul his mouth tastes. The Scout stews in it for a while, staring off into the same corner of the room he always ends up staring at from his bed. His nose hurts.

Gingerly he pushes himself up from the boxspring, the metal coils squeaking painfully as he rises. He paws at one eye. It’s past dark, going by the window that overlooks the train yard. He’s pretty sure it was light when he’d gone to sleep.

… Something’s different. It takes him a bewildering ten seconds of staring around the apartment to realize that it’s clean past all recognition. There isn’t a single empty box or paper scrap or beer bottle left in sight. He’d be more alarmed if he weren’t so groggy, but he still feels like he is maybe dying a bit and it’s hard to muster up many feelings past that.

When Lorne walks out from the hallway, pink-faced and rubbing at his orange hair with a towel, the Scout is completely at a loss for words. Lorne fills the gap. “Hey, you ain’t dead after all. I used your shower, figured you owed me that much for kickin’ the shit outta me.”

The Scout stares at him, temporarily mute. Maybe he should just go back to sleep.

But he drags himself upright, mostly, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Uh,” he starts, looking around in the same way a child realizing he is lost in the mall would, “y, yeah, sure, um. What … where’s all my …”

“Yer filthy freakin’ garbage? In the dumpster. You were gonna drown in it, sheesh. You’re welcome.”

The Scout looks at Lorne again, uncomprehending. Lorne pulls the towel down from his head and gives him the once-over, an expression of amused pity. When he throws the towel at him the Scout’s reflexes catch up first, snagging it out of the air. “Y’smell like shit, go take a damn shower,” he says, “or I’m gonna put you an’ your nonexistent hygiene in the dumpster too.”


	9. 21: DEAL WITH IT

## 21\. DEAL WITH IT

When the Scout showers—and usually he _does_ shower, he just forgot this time, thanks—he tends to stay there until the hot water vanishes, getting out only when the cold starts gushing and forces him to stop staring at the grimy tiled walls. He is reasonably sure if he had an infinite supply of hot water he would never get out at all.

But Lorne has gone and used up most of it, and the Scout gets _maybe_ five minutes of hot water before it goes polar. The only reason this is bearable is because his apartment’s air conditioning is a joke at best, and the cold water seems to help wake him up.

By the time he gets out and pulls his clothes back on (mostly just his shorts, because his shirt is stiff and unpleasant with dried blood), he has mostly convinced himself the last half-hour must have been a very vivid dream. Fucking _Lorne_ has no business being in his house, and he has never met anyone willing to clean up after him.

Thusly, the sight of his now-visible carpet as he walks back into the living room is more than a little unnerving. The sight of Lorne in his kitchen, _cooking_ , is even worse. “What’re you friggin’ doing?” the Scout manages to get out, as Lorne pulls the lid off the only pan the Scout owns and prods at something inside with a fork.

Lorne snorts. “Tryin’ t’salvage this damn chicken. Was the only thing in your fridge wasn’t gone spoiled, an’ truthfully I ain’t even a hundred percent on that.”

The Scout is not easy to render speechless. He is having a bitch of a time trying to find his tongue now, though. “Get—get outta my house, fuck, are you nuts? You can’t jus’ come eat my food—”

“Was gonna share, duh,” Lorne says, cutting a deadpan look toward the Scout. “I ain’t feelin’ so hot still after that beatin’ you gave me, I figure fair’s fair. D’you even know how to cook? There was dust on the damn pan.”

As he speaks the Scout has stalked closer, bristling, all his confusion and unease bubbling into an angry boil. “Are you _stupid?_ ” he spits, leaning into Lorne’s face, using his height. “Are you jus’ this fuckin’ much of an _idiot_? I don’t wanna see your goddamn face no more, ‘specially not in my _house_ , God! I dunno what you think you’re playin’ at, doin‘—doin’ all _this_ , but it ain’t workin. An’ I am jus’ _looking_ for an excuse to pitch you out the window, so you better oughta get walkin’ _now_.”

Lorne says nothing through all of this. Hardly graces the Scout with a look. What he does say, some fifteen seconds after the Scout has finished, is: “You think this is done? Looks done to me.”

The open flame on the stove is the only thing that prevents the Scout from swinging at him then and there. It’s the only opening Lorne apparently needs. Almost before the Scout realizes it he’s pulled out the two halves of chicken breast from the pan and dropped them onto two paper plates he’s dug out from somewhere, where barbeque sauce and a plastic fork waits on each one. “Here y’go,” he says breezily, shoving one into the Scout’s hands.

The Scout sputters. “Are you—”

“Friggin’ _God,_ Ashley, jus’ eat the stupid chicken. Y’can throw me out after.”

He would protest, he really would, except he’s just remembered that he can’t actually remember the last time he ate. Presented with no barrier between himself and food, instinct takes over. He resents every bite.

They eat in silence. The only sound is the muffled radio from the guy across the hall, which is always on maximum volume, and the lazy rush of traffic from the street below.

Then Lorne says, “So we runnin’ tomorrow?” right as the Scout is in the middle of chewing. “You can’t say no now, y’know, you showed me where it is you live. I’ll come hunt your ass down.”

The Scout forces his bite down, chokes a bit, and still forces the words out. “What is _wrong_ with you? What part’a _fuck off_ ain’t you hearin’?”

“I hear it,” Lorne said easily, pushing around the last of his chicken on his plate. He’s leaned up against the counter, his shirt caught on the edge and riding up an inch or two. “Just it’s I don’t wanna. Deal with it.”

 


	10. 1: ROME & 2: LOCKS & 3: TOMORROW

##  **  
**

**  
**

##  **_BOOK II:  
_** YOU MAY BE A SINNER BUT  
YOUR INNOCENCE IS MINE  


 

 

 

## 1. ROME

Ashley kicked him out. The Scout had expected this, even counted on it. Rome wasn’t built in a day. It didn’t fall in one, either. He had expected Ashley to be nastier about it, actually, given how quick he seemed to be to jump to blows. Instead his RED counterpart had only snarled and blustered at him until he left, his arms limp at his sides, like he was afraid to touch him. Maybe he was.

Didn’t matter. The Scout showed up in the train yard the next morning as promised. Ashley was not there.

This early in the morning there was hardly anyone else in sight, and no one that would bother to stop him when he stooped to pick up a handful of pebbles and started pitching them with perfect accuracy at Ashley’s windows. Not that anyone probably would have stopped him anyway, he thought.

It took ten minutes of rock-throwing before one of the windows was ripped up and a familiar face glared down out of the gap. Finally. The Scout threw one more for good measure, being sure to aim for the brick instead of the window itself. “Hey!” he hollered, waving. “Get the hell down here!”

Even two stories up, he could make out the way Ashley’s lip curled. The window slammed shut.

 

 

 

 

## 2. LOCKS

The whole house is clean and the Scout hasn’t been able to keep still since he’d thrown out Lorne the day before. It feels empty, like some yawning chasm. There’s nothing holding him down. When he does manage to sit down he finds he has some trouble making himself get up from the refuge of his bed, the one part of the apartment Lorne hadn’t been able to get his hands on. The bed feels safe.

He’s hungry again. He fell asleep again at some point last night and woke up starving, but all he’d done was go take another long shower. Now he is sitting naked on his bed, water slowly evaporating away, staring at the brown carpet.

He doesn’t realize what the sharp noises behind him are until it occurs to him to turn and look, doing so in time to see another rock fly off the glass. He swings himself around to the other side of the bed, lifts the glass.

Lorne.

The window goes down again, and the Scout gets up to check the lock on the door.

 

 

 

 

## 3. TOMORROW

The door was locked when the Scout tried it. (He did try knocking first, to no avail.) He rapped his knuckles on the wood once, twice more, and then dropped down to sit against it. He could do waiting games.

… Well, he would have liked to think that. In reality, he sat there for about fifteen minutes before deciding he would probably go insane if he waited a moment longer.

On his feet again, then, pounding on the door. Ashley already made the fatal mistake of proving he was home. “Ash, man, c’mon, we’re losin’ time here! It is gonna be hotter’n the friggin’ _sun_ today.”

Still nothing. Scowling, biting his lip, the Scout stepped back and examines the door. The apartment was crap, but the door looked a little more solid than he would care to test. Breaking and entering probably wouldn’t serve to further his cause anyway.

“… Alright,” he called again at last. “Okay, well, I’m gonna go run. You c’mon out if you want, I know you can see the train yard. I’ll seeya tomorrow, anyway. Bye.”

That was all. He disappeared back down the stairs, heading for the train yard. Ashley never did show up that day.


	11. 4: WATCH & 5: SHARK

## 4. WATCH

The next day was much the same. So was the one after that. On the third day the Scout rested, sitting in the thin shade of a bus stop shelter and just watching Ashley’s apartment. Just trying to get a feel for the place. With his hat and clothes he knew he hadn’t worn around Ashley yet, he was as good as invisible.

The first thing of any note that happened that day was a dog fight breaking out, two curs in the street savaging one another over a flattened squirrel. A little terrier and something that looked like it might have beagle in its ancestry. The terrier won, but as it chased the beagle away the Scout could see it dragging its forepaw, crushed and pulped.

The terrier peeled its prize off the blazing cement and limped off somewhere.

The Scout waited. He saw people dashing back and forth over the sidewalks, and cars doing the same. He saw a robin and its nest wedged between two forgotten flower pots on a rooftop, and it flew from and back to it, over and over, for the whole day. He saw no buses, which seemed curious, but perhaps the route had changed. He saw children leaving Ashley’s apartment, toys in hand, yammering cheerfully to one another, and he saw men in unseasonably warm dress stalking inside its doors. And sometimes he would watch Ashley’s window, but the blinds were always drawn.

It was warm out, and although the bus stop’s shelter was hardly comfortable he soon found himself nodding off. This was why he did not notice the little gang closing in on him, perhaps. Not until one of them kicked him.

He jolted awake in an instant, recoiling in pain. Someone laughed. Towering over him were three white boys, all of them looking like caricatures of real people, like overwrought bullies plucked from the pages of a comic books. The Scout grimaced. “ _What?_ ”

“Whaddya think you’re doin’ here?” asked the apparent leader, whose hair more closely resembled shoe polish than anything else. “Ain’t ever seen you around none, guy. We ain’t big fans’a nobodies on our turf. Fuck off.”

Scout looked them over, and got to his feet. Damn it all, they had him with his back to the wall, literally. “Or what?” he ventured, trying to size up the danger. “You gonna get your big sister to come beat me up?”

“Hey, wait,” said another of them. He had more cheekbones than face. “Nah, I seen him, he goes runnin’ around in circles in the train yard some days, with that one guy. The crazy one. Ashley.”

“Izzat so?” said Shoe Polish. “Don’t matter. Ashley ain’t one’a us, an’ I ain’t ever seen him give two shits about nobody else neither.” He looked back down at the Scout, grinning. “Which is just bad luck for you, ain’t it?”

On a good day, in the open—like on the day he had met Ashley—the Scout could take on three guys at once. Cornered, though, and with his shin stinging from where he’d been kicked, caught unawares? The Scout knew a bad match-up when he saw one, and Shoe Polish and his friends didn’t look like the screwing-around types. “Hey,” he started. “Didn’t know, is all. I was just waitin’ on Ashley, wasn’t wantin’ to start nothin’. Sorry.”

“You’re _gonna_ be,” Shoe Polish said.

 

 

 

 

## 5. SHARK

It isn’t like it does any good, exactly, but the Scout can only handle the closed-off heat of his apartment for so long. Opening the window doesn’t really help with the temperature, but at least it lets fresh air in.

This is the Scout’s rationale as he pushes the window up. To his annoyance his eyes go directly to the train yard, even though it’s about two in the afternoon and Lorne has always been gone by ten. Nothing, though. The Scout breathes in the slightly less foul city air, and almost turns away. Almost.

Instead he hears a shout, and laughing. Those noisy kids next door, he thinks, until his gaze happens to fall on the bus stop directly opposite his building. A couple of figures, half-obscured by the bus stop sign. A struggle.

His palms start to itch. He watches the fight. Three to one, it looks like, those jokers that act like hotshots, act like they own this neighborhood. The Scout has no particular love for them, nor enmity. He is closer, perhaps, to a shark, finding blood in the water.

On his feet, unsteady. At his apartment door, the scummy high-ceilinged hall, the creaky stairs. The building’s entrance. The summer heat hits him like a wall as he walks onto the street, and a car nearly does the same as he crosses the road. He’s hungry. He reaches the fight, and grabs the nearest one by the hair, dragging him backwards. He needs one of the live ones, he needs something that will fight back. Kicking a corpse has never done anything for him.

So he shoves the first guy against the shelter wall and drives his knee up into his gut, and swings at his face. He prickles all over, too tense, too wired, waiting, waiting, wishing he were dead so he could just be done with it until _there_ it is, _there_ , a trickle of red streaming down the guy’s face, more of it beading from his own knuckles where they had scraped teeth.

There’s a shout and he hears his name and he turns around and something hits him in the ear. The whole world flashes white. The Scout grins.

Shouting, again, but no more laughter. Sometimes he hears the dull thud of someone hitting the wall or the ground. One of his eyes has suddenly ceased to open fully, and there’s a tooth lying on the bench when he stops moving.

The hotshots are gone, into thin air, maybe. The Scout feels the adrenaline surging through him and nothing else. When Lorne shakily pushes himself up from the blood-smeared corner of the bus shelter, staring up at him in disbelief, he doesn’t even notice.


	12. 6: WIMP & 7: DRAG & 8: COP

## 6. WIMP

It had been … it had been a _while_ since the Scout had really gotten thrashed. He’d gotten stabbed and decapitated a few times on the last mission, yeah, but that was different. That was a fast blackout and then he was on his feet again, good as new. A thrashing, that was different. The Scout was having trouble breathing, and he was pretty sure both his eyes were blacked. Blood was still pouring down from his nose and drooling out of his lip where he’d cut it on the bench, when one of the thugs had slammed his head down against it. Everything on him felt tender and brittle, fragile. Ma always had called him delicate.

And then there was Ashley. Ashley was standing stock-still over him, chest heaving, bloodied hands still locked into fists. And he was staring down at the Scout, but in the sort of way that made the Scout think he wasn’t seeing him at all. “A–Ashley?” he got out thickly, around the bright penny taste between his teeth.

Ashley blinked. Once, twice. He had a black eye, too, and a cut on his cheek. For what was possibly the first time that Lorne could remember, his expression became one of bewilderment. “What the hell’re you doin’ here?”

“I’m—” the Scout started, and broke off hacking. He brought his hand to his mouth and retched, and when he could catch his breath again his fingers were covered in bloody spittle. “Shit. Hnn. I think I’m gonna throw up, is what I’m doin’.”

“From jus’ that? Wimp.”

The Scout would have liked to give him a look of utter disdain. He really would have. When he tried to, though, he wound up vomiting instead—which, in hindsight, achieved roughly the same thing.

 

 

 

 

## 7. DRAG

The Scout wants to leave Lorne there, in his own blood and vomit. He really does. The dumb fuck was asking for it by coming around here when he didn’t know shit, didn’t know anything about this neighborhood. And the Scout is starting to come down from the adrenaline high, which means he’s starting to feel bored and itchy and a strong wish to not be anywhere at all. The last thing he wants to deal with is  _Lorne._

And he was going to leave him there, if not for the fact that an instant before he turns to go he happens to look up, down the street, and sees a police car cruise by. Another one. They’ve been crawling this entire neighborhood, ever since the guy on the floor above him had been found stabbed to death in his apartment, and the Scout has already had to sit through three interrogations. He didn’t even know the guy’s name, and anyway, he didn’t kill people. Not when he wasn’t being paid.

The police car turns. Now it’s heading toward them. The Scout is covered in tiny cuts and bruises and Lorne looks like somebody tried to kill him, because somebody has tried, and he doesn’t. Want. To talk to more goddamn policemen. So. So he has to cover his ass.

Without explanation he pulls Lorne to his feet with ease. Lorne makes a confused sort of gurgle as the Scout props him up and starts pulling him across the street. And they almost fucking make it. They’re at the base of the apartment steps when the Scout hears the telltale sound of a car rolling to a stop behind him, and an unfamiliar voice calls out _hey!_

Lorne mutters something that sounds confused, near his ear. The Scout braces himself, stops, and looks over his shoulder to see the cop coming toward him. All navy uniform, bastard’s been sweating like a pig in his stupid little car. “Your pal looks in pretty bad shape, there,” the pig says as the Scout turns around. “Trouble?”

 

 

 

 

## 8. COP

Mostly he was keeping it together. Having something to lean on certainly helped, though the Scout had definitely not anticipated this. Ashley was really not a “carry you to safety” type, and doubly so with regards to the Scout.

He didn’t notice the cop until Ashley turned them around. The cop was a stout man with a curly moustache and a face that might have been more at home on a warthog. If he had been in better shape, he might have felt Ashley bristle. He never would have dreamed his unexpected savior’s next words, though, for in a clear, deferential sort of tone, he said, “No, sir. No trouble, thanks.”

The cop snorted, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops. “You tellin’ me your buddy tripped down the stairs?”

“We had a … a disagreement, is all. Sir. It got a little out of hand.” Was this seriously _Ashley_ speaking? “We’re goin’ back up to my place here to get fixed up. That’s all.”

“Hmm. That true, carrottop?”

 _Carrottop._ Jesus. But the Scout just nodded.

“Well,” said the cop, looking them over. The Scout stole another glance at Ashley and found him standing bolt upright, straight-backed, with his eyes glued to the sidewalk. “Sure looks like you picked the wrong fight, Saint Patrick, didn’tcha? All right. Get going.”

The cop turned and went back to his car. The Scout kept staring at Ashley, even as he stiffly turned them back around and half-hauled the Scout up the stairs. He remained rigid as a board until the door of the apartment complex swung shut behind him, and then without warning he pushed the Scout away and stumbled a step or two forward. The Scout swayed, caught himself on the wall, and he still hurt absolutely everywhere but this was not nearly so interesting to him as the fact as the way that Ashley’s hands were shaking very slightly at his sides. “Hey,” he said, warily, for he really did not have it in him to take another punch today. “Uh. Ash? Ashley. H’lo? What was that about?”

Ashley seized up, his fingers curling into hard fists that did not shake at all. Without another word he stalked toward the stairs that would lead up to his floor.


	13. 9: BODY & 10: REASONS

## 9. BODY

It had seemed like a pretty sure thing that the door to Ashley’s apartment would be shut and locked by the time the Scout managed to limp heavily up the stairs. The fact that it was standing wide open was a bit of a shock, and he stood there leaning on the bannister for longer than strictly necessary gaping at it. Maybe it was a trap, he thought, and then the bannister creaked angrily and he pushed off it in a hurry. He didn’t need to add a fall down a flight of stairs to his day.

So … in he went. It was as stiflingly hot here as it was everywhere else, and the Scout found himself hoping the cold front the radio had been predicting as August became September would hurry up. And the apartment looked as clean as he had left it, which was … which was weird. He stood in the doorway for a few uncertain minutes, waiting to see if Ashley would appear. He called his name a few times and got no response, and eventually he went inside and shut the door behind him.

Ashley’s apartment had an air of unwelcome to it that he had not noticed the last time he was here. The place looked weirdly empty, somehow emptier than it had been after the Scout had picked the place up. He was still puzzling over how this was possible when a door clicked and Ashley stepped out of the bathroom, wiping at his face with a dripping wet handtowel. He paused in the tiny hall, really looking at the Scout for what seemed to him like the first time in a while. “You got real lucky,” he said eventually. “An’ y’look like shit, too.”

“Gee, thanks. Wasn’t expectin’ on you bein’ my guardian angel there, either. So, uh. Thanks for that, too.”

“Don’t. If I’d known it was you they was beatin’ up on I woulda helped.”

The Scout scowled as Ashley passed. He was not expecting him to throw the towel at his face, and nearly fell on his ass scrambling to recover it. It was sort of more just damp now, and it had blood on it, but the Scout used it to gingerly daub at his bruised face anyway. “An’ you pulled me across the street an’ told the cop we were best pals? What was that about?”

“He left, didn’t he?”

The Scout supposed the cop had, but he said nothing, because he was starting to feel dizzy. Carefully he let himself slide down to the floor, and groaned as he did. The cloth against his face helped a little, but not much. “Nn. Fuck. Who were those guys?”

“I dunno. Some assholes that think they own the place.” Now Ashley was perched on his flimsy-looking table. The Scout watched this for a moment in interest, waiting to see if the thing would collapse under him. When it shifted to the side he thought it was going to, until he noticed everything else had shifted with it. Ah. No, he was just keeling over. “You had better fucking not die in my house,” he heard Ashley say. It was sort of funny; it was the kind of phrase he’d never thought he’d hear someone say with so much seriousness. “I will fuckin’ dump your body in the ocean, I am not talkin’ to another cop over you. Fuckin’ cops.”

“Maybe I will,” the Scout got out thickly. “I’m … I am gonna pass out, I think, though. See you later.”

“Are you _kidding?_ ”

 

 

 

 

## 10. REASONS

It was dark when the Scout blinked awake again, the kind of deep, quiet dark that Boston didn’t see much of. It must have been way after midnight.

He tried pushing himself up and failed dramatically. The carpet smelled musty and unpleasant, and he groaned aloud as he went limp. His arms were shaky and there was a gnawing that shot up from his gut through to his chest, and everything on him seemed to hurt worse than it had when he’d fainted. He hated fainting. One of these days it was going to get him killed.

Ashley. Where was Ashley? He tried to pick out shapes in the darkness, without much success. He’d never been in here when it was this dark, and for a moment a nervous, sinking feeling descended over him. Was he still in Ashley’s apartment at all? Had Ashley decided to make good on his threat from back in the alley, had he dragged him off somewhere to kill him?

But then there was a click, and light spilled over the room. The first thing the Scout noticed was the rickety-looking table; he was exactly where he had passed out. Something nudged his leg, right on one of the bruised spots, and he flinched away. “So you’re still kickin’,” said Ashley, and he sounded unimpressed.

The Scout grunted. “Takes more’n that.”

“No it doesn’t. I once saw Heavy deck you ‘cross the face an’ it broke your jaw.”

“Yeah, well, your Heavy is literally a moose,” the Scout said, trying again to lever himself upright. “Oh, God. Fuck. Fine, yeah, it don’t take much more’n that. How’s your nose?”

He said it a bit more bitingly than he had intended to, though in hindsight the tone would likely not have mattered at all. The Scout had oriented himself now, and figured out where Ashley was in relation to him. As he got up he caught Ashley’s eye, and the way his expression hardened into a flat, uncomfortable pastiche of a human face was more than a little unpleasant to behold. “Broken,” he said, biting the word off.

Fuck. The Scout was in too much pain to handle this right now. “Okay, okay. Sorry. Okay? I’m sorry. D’you got any Tylenol or somethin’?”

Ashley’s expression did not change, but after giving the Scout a hard stare for another few seconds, he turned and went back down the hall. He came back after a minute or two, after the Scout had gotten shakily to his feet and limped over to the table with its single wooden chair. A bottle of something was unceremoniously dumped in front of him. The Scout popped it open and dug out three pills, gulping them down.

His head kept pounding. Probably a dehydration headache; he was weak with hunger, to add to it, but just then he was sort of nervous about asking Ashley for anything more. His weakened condition was all too clear to him.

But still, he couldn’t help himself, as Ashley meandered over to the fridge and pulled it open. “So, uh. Thanks. Y’know, for not dumpin’ me into the ocean. And all.”

His RED counterpart did not reply, just pulled a beer out from the fridge. There was a sharp crack as he popped the lid off with the edge of the countertop. “Those guys? They woulda killed you, if you’re really that easy to kill,” Ashley said, sounding more serious than the Scout had yet heard from him. “They really would’ve. People get killed around here all the time. Hardly nobody cares.”

The Scout watched him as he took a pull off the bottle, turning this over in his mind. “How come you live here, then?”

“What?”

“Seriously. I mean, I don’t get it. You could live anywhere, why here?”

“None of your business,” Ashley said, but it was less sullen or annoyed so much as it was defeated. And then: “Why won’t you go away?”

“I got my reasons,” the Scout said. “C’n I have a beer?”

Ashley stared down at him for a long time, but a few seconds later, the Scout had a beer in his hands.


	14. 11: PLAN & 12: BUSY

## 11. PLAN

The beer, in retrospect, had been a horrible idea. The headache and the nausea caught him by the neck and brought him down like a bolas. That would teach him to drink on an empty stomach. He had been totally miserable for about all of an hour before passing out again, and in the morning he felt … not exactly  _better_ , but able to move. Which was good, because Ashley kicked him out.

Ashley did not, however, tell him not to come back.

Even so, the Scout stayed in his part of town for a week after he had limped back the next morning. Before he could return he got the call from BLU, and for the next month at Steel the only times he saw Ashley usually ended in one of them dying. Steel was a big base, though. A few times he thought about trying to get in touch with him, maybe steal one of Spy’s fancy invisiwatches and sniff around the RED buildings, but he cast it aside. It would probably mess up his plan, and he needed some time to work on that anyway.

Said plan was cemented when he finally shipped back up to Massachusetts. It had taken some doing, but he’d managed to find Ashley’s last name—Hart—and his number.

Now he just had to hope that Ashley actually _owned_ a telephone.

 

 

 

 

## 12. BUSY

There’s a godawful droning buzz that makes the Scout flinch hard enough to knock his chair back a few inches. It takes him until the second ring to realize what’s making the noise, and another two to actually find the damn thing. It’s hidden in the closet, because for some reason that’s where the phone line is. He doesn’t want to answer it. He forces himself to. There’s silence on the other end until someone says, “H’lo?”

“Uh, hi. Who’s this?”

“S’me, s’Lorne. Where ya been? I called like six times.”

“… Out. What do you want? How’d—how’d you get this number?”

“I’m doin’ great, thanks for askin’. Hey, I was gonna go hit the beach today, since it ain’t nasty hot out. You wanna come?”

“I’m busy.”

Lorne doesn’t answer right away. There’s something sharp and cold in his voice when he does, even over the phone. “What, you hangin’ out with your racist prick friends instead?”

“What are you talking about?”

“… Christ, Ash. Jus’ be at the beach, if you’re comin’. I’ll be there ’til five.”

And the line goes dead. The Scout looks at the receiver and for a few seconds becomes extremely aware that he is kneeling on the dirty carpet, hunched over a phone in an equally dirty closet. There’s something sticky on the receiver when he puts it back down.

The Scout doesn’t have any plans. The Scout never has plans, until the minute before he decides to do them, and he is not sure why he said he was busy. He is not sure what Lorne was talking about, or which friends, and isn’t until he remembers how he had met Lorne.

The next thing he notices is that he has gotten dressed and gone outside. He supposes he knew he was doing all these things when he did them, but just now it’s a little surprising.

It is a humid and overcast day. The Scout lingers on the empty sidewalk for a few seconds, trying to remember which way he should be going.


	15. 13: PORT & 14: BEST

## 13\. PORT

The beach nearest West End was almost identical to the beach near South End, and that, at least, was something. It was a mess of people and dogs, all taking up too much space, and the sound of the crowd nearly drowned out the sound of the waves. The Scout liked that part of it, though. He liked feeling part of a collective, one small part in some huge hive. It was why he had chosen to stay in Boston even after learning he was no longer welcome.

That was the past, and the Scout didn’t have much truck with the past. Life went too quickly to dwell on old things. Right now he was weaving his way through the city of umbrellas and sunbathers, enjoying the sun beating down on his back. He might get burned to hell for it, that’s what he got for being Irish, but a sunburn later was preferable to being stifled now.

Around and up and through. Occasionally he would fish into his pocket for the little box he’d gotten from Sniper, last mission—a camera, of all things, wrapped in cardboard. Cheaply made. _Disposable camera_ , he had said, which had baffled the Scout about as much as any of the other things Sniper brought for the team to look at sometimes. Last mission he’d come with a whole damn box of these cameras, said his mum had sent them off with him. The Scout had brought home two for the hell of it; he didn’t own a camera. There wasn’t much he really wanted to take pictures of, but it seemed like a decent thing to have around.

So he kept looking for photo ops, without much success. He had never been very artistically inclined. It led to a slow pace. He could have made better time, but he walked leisurely, calloused feet bare on the hot sand. It wasn’t like Ashley was going to come anyway, he thought. What a stupid idea.

So when he actually saw Ashley—and it was Ashley, unmistakeably, sitting there on the docks in clothes totally unsuited to the beach and staring out at the water—it was a bit of a shock.

The Scout picked the pace up a bit, and reached him before he could go somewhere else. “Hey!” he called, and Ashley lifted his head, looking a bit startled. “Didn’t figure you’d actually come.”

Ashley shrugged, noncommital. He looked back out at the waves.

God, this guy was awkward. The Scout was starting to question if his plan was worth the effort.

Even so, he dropped down next to him. It was high tide, and he shivered as his feet hit the water. He was about to speak when Ashley beat him to it. “You ever been down here at night?”

“Huh? Well. No, I guess I ain’t. What, is that when you come down here?”

“Sometimes,” Ashley said. “To the docks, anyway.”

“The docks?”

“I like … watchin’ em. The boats, I mean. Comin’ in and out, watchin’ guys do up the rigging. This ain’t the best beach for it, too in-land. Mostly just old guys fishing outta rowboats. Usually I’ll go further out, like around the waterfront.”

The Scout did not have an answer, not immediately. Ashley volunteering information about himself was a bit too new, too unusual, and he had to regain his footing. “Cool,” he said at last. “Sounds like you know about that stuff. What, you work on the boats ever?”

“Yeah, some. Got picked up by RED pretty soon after, though. So I just watch, now.”

There was a wistfulness in his voice, the Scout realized as he listened. Something about it made him distinctly uncomfortable; he pressed on, trying to bury it in words. “Ain’t big on boats, personally. Not the best at swimmin‘. An’ they always smell funny.”

Ashley glanced at him, once, from the corner of his eye. There was a pause. “You live in Boston an’ you can’t swim any good? This’s a damn port city.”

“Yeah, so what? I don’t go near no deep water, it ain’t a problem.”

“I am gonna push you off the bridge in Teufort next time we get sent there.”

“You damn well better not,” the Scout said, and it was sharper than he had wanted it to be.

 

 

 

 

## 14. BEST

Lorne’s bristling. The Scout knows bristling when he sees it, and today he doesn’t feel like poking any bears. So he just doesn’t answer, and goes back to looking at the water.

It’s an okay day for boats, he’d guess. Just okay. The best days are the bright, hot ones, nearer the docks proper, when it’s a hive of activity. Not that the beach isn’t even busier than the docks, even now, but he likes the mix of silence and bawdy camaraderie that surrounds the ships and their sailors. The beach is just a mess of families and couples and children. The docks have purpose.

He can only make out one boat right now, a small sailboat drifting lazily in the still air nearer the horizon. Some figure reclines near the edge, a fishing pole in hand. It’s a nice image. It’s a nice thought.

And then Lorne jostles him, and the Scout looks at him again in time for a blinding flash to go off in his face. He snaps something, trying to shield his eyes, but now Lorne is going on again. “Guess maybe you’ve seen one’a’these, though? I got a bunch’a ‘em off Sniper. I tell you what, I ain’t never gonna understand Aussie shit. Lookit this damn thing, it’s a camera in a cardboard box. My dad has a camera an’ it takes thirty minutes just to set the damn thing up. We are livin’ in the future.”

Camera. The Scout blinks down at the bright green box in Lorne’s hand. Sure enough, it has a lens and a flash bulb, and he guesses that it does, sort of, resemble a camera. “Don’t take my picture,” he says before thinking about why, and then he has to hastily follow up with, “Lemme see that, yeah?”

“Sure thing, majesty. Don’t drop it in the water, I want some’a those photos.”

Lorne hands it to him, and it’s surprisingly heavy. It has a nice weight to it. He turns it over, finding wheels and buttons as he does, and half-listens as Lorne babbles out explanations on what they all do. And because it seems like the sensible thing to do, when handed a camera, the Scout lifts the viewfinder to his eye.

The first thing he sees is the horizon. Blue sky on blue water, devoid of people. All else is blackness. The Scout has never used a camera before. He is not altogether sure if he was aware cameras were something regular people could buy, he has sort of always thought their existence was limited to fancy things and prison blocks. At the very least, he doesn’t think anyone has ever taken his picture before.

Darkness, stillness all around, and nothing before him except the sea. The Scout lingers longer than he had meant to. He turns his head, the viewport still to his eye, and finds the beach, where the tide laps at the sand. It feels—more distant, removed. A little blurry. There’s something pleasant about it.

“… an’ you hit this button, this one, that one snaps the picture.” Something jostles his hand. “Try it, g’wan, I got like five more back home.”

So he does; he presses the button. He hears a snap and a click and a whirr, and then he is letting Lorne pull his arm down and show him how he has to spin the notched wheel on the side to advance the film. Back to his eye, then. He takes a picture of the fisherman, a distant dark dot at the end of the world. _Snap, whrrr._ He takes one of the distant city blocks, hot and faded. _Snap, whrrr._ And he even takes one of Lorne, because he is there and he is close by and he is watching the Scout expectantly.

_Snap, whrr._

The Scout lowers the camera, and finds he does not quite have the willpower to let go of it. “Where, uh.” Lorne is still watching him. “Where—can I get one of these?” he asks, a little surprised at his own question. “If I—could you get me one? From your sniper?”

Lorne cocks one eyebrow and whacks him in the shoulder. The irritation is briefer than usual. “Just take it, man. Like I said, I got a lot more at home.”

“What about when the film runs out?”

Now Lorne looks a little lost for words. “I mean … heck, dude, Iunno. If you really like ’em you can have ’em, I guess.”

“I … really?”

“I guess. Sure.”

This, the Scout thinks as he looks down at the camera again, is possibly the best thing anyone has ever said to him.


	16. 15: BUY & 16: GIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Content Warning(s):**  
>  _use of slur ("fag")_  
> 

## 15\. BUY 

The Scout’s mother _had_ always said people would surprise you. The Scout had, a few years ago, amended this sentiment, finding it inaccurate to his experience: people might surprise you, but people will always disappoint you sooner or later.

So he’d already been disappointed by Ashley, in the alleyway behind the bar. This was inevitable. He had even been surprised by Ashley, like the thing with the cop. And also, just, kind of all of him. Ashley was a surprising sort of person, he’d learned, though he would not call most of them pleasant surprises. Or, he supposed, even unpleasant.

Just … surprises.

Two hours later, sitting in the shade on the boardwalk, he was confronted with another surprise: the fact that Ashley was still completely taken with the camera. It had gone from sort of odd to really weird to just fascinating in rapid succession, especially given the way that the camera seemed to have reminded him how to talk. The Scout was so used to leading their conversations by now that he was having trouble finding spots to get a word in edgewise.

Ashley had drilled him all about the damn camera, first. Wanted to know everything about how it worked, what all the buttons and dials did. The Scout couldn’t even give him all the answers, there were so many questions. “Sniper gave me, like, all this shit to develop the film, though. I guess you gotta be real careful with how you do it, like you gotta have all the lights out or it messes up the photo.”

Ashley, now with the nearly used-up camera in one hand and a half-eaten snocone in the other, stared down at the cracks in the sidewalk. “C’n I buy that off you? I mean—I think I oughta have enough money for that.”

Anything the Scout might have said came to a screeching halt. “Wait,” he started up before he could catch himself, “y’don’t know? I mean—I figured you’d get paid the same as me, I get, like. I mean I don’t tell this to nobody anymore but I get more damn money outta BLU than I could ever spend.”

It was this at last that seemed to give Ashley pause. “I … I dunno. I don’t remember if they told me.”

“What the hell, man, they wouldn’t’a not told you!”

“I don’t remember, okay, get offa my back,” he snapped. “I don’t know, probably they did. I don’t know. It all jus’ goes straight into my bank account.”

“Friggin’ hell, man, is that why you live in that rat trap apartment?” No answer. Ashley kept his eyes down. The Scout chewed his lip and followed his gaze to find a trail of ants milling around a fallen piece of snocone. And then, before the moment could sour further, before his opportunity could slip away: “Heck, that ain’t none’a my business. You can have all the camera stuff, I don’t care.” And the gambit: “But you gotta come pick it up yourself.”

 

 

 

 

## 16. GIN

Lorne has a house. It is an honest-to-God _house_ , a small but cozy little thing sitting next to a canal and a bakery in an out-of-the-way corner of one of West End’s friendlier neighborhoods, and it smells, upon entry, like something fresh and mouthwatering. The Scout isn’t sure what it is, exactly, although it’s familiar. Maybe it’s just carried over from the bakery. By the time they reach it the sun has begun to sink down behind the city, and so as the Scout peers around the nice clean entryway, glimpsing a living room and a bedroom, Lorne flicks on lights that glow warm and soft overhead. The Scout winces. “Chill out, y’freak, yeah?” Lorne says, batting his elbow. “C’mon. I got leftovers about to go off anyway, let’s eat.”

The Scout says nothing, his arms tucked across his chest with his hands under his armpits as he follows Lorne down the hall. “This whole place is yours?” he manages to ask presently, but he fumbles it and none of the words come out sounding like words. Lorne turns on him, brows furrowed, but before he can repeat himself Lorne says:

“Shoes off at the door, man, didn’t your ma ever teach you no manners?”

At this the Scout stares at him a little blankly. Then he laughs—once, too loudly—and kicks off his shoes. Right. Of course.

Satisfied, Lorne leads him further into the house. The Scout does not bother repeating himself.

The whole place is clean. Not quite tidy, there’s a fair amount of things that have obviously been left out, but they are noticable only because the rest of the house is so well put together. Lorne’s house has shelves on the walls and decorations on the shelves, and none of them are broken or hanging at crazy angles. There are no dubious stains on the carpets or huge dents in the kitchen’s linoleum floor. Everything is brightly lit. Something about this does not sit correctly with the Scout. Something about this makes him want to leave, immediately, and never return.

But then Lorne is dropping cold deli sandwiches and beers on the table. The Scout stands paralyzed near the edge of the kitchen at first, and it is only Lorne’s suspicious squinting that drives him to go ahead and sit down. It feels like he’s sitting on nails. He is not supposed to be here.

Somehow, he eats. Lorne talks all the way through it, mostly about nothing, punctuating himself with uncomfortably pointed questions: _why so nervous, ain’t you ever seen a sandwich before, didja think I lived in a tree or somethin’?_ None are quite so bad as the interrogating about his salary, though. He eats. Somehow. He finishes the beer first, and no sooner does he put it down than Lorne has placed another next to it. The Scout takes it. The cap pops off with a loud crack on the table’s edge. (It does not occur to him that it is a very nice table and probably should not be used as a bottle opener, but Lorne says nothing.)

The Scout is not supposed to be here. This thought, at least, goes from a front-row stage production in the theatre of his mind to a background choir when Lorne ushers him into the living room and pulls out the promised camera supplies.

“He gave me this, uh, where is it, this little book’a instructions? For developin’ it, an’ all? I was just gonna go have someone else develop it for me but Sniper he made me take all this anyway. Weird dude, is your Sniper weird? Aw, he’s cool though. So anyway you can have it, I guess, if you want. Y’want another beer? Or I got other stuff, you like gin? I hate gin but I ain’t had nobody to foist it off on.”

“Gin’s fine,” the Scout says, and a moment later there is something cold and bubbly and smelling intensely of pine sap in his hand. It almost stings as it goes down, but he is too busy rifling through the camera things—and trying to grasp why on earth he finds them so fascinating—to notice.

Lorne tells him what little he knows, pointing at the special light and the tongs and clothes pins, and in the middle of it it occurs to the Scout that he’s not going to remember any of it, because now the gin has hit him and he’s having trouble focusing on what Lorne is saying. It can’t be too hard to figure out on his own. There’s a book. “There’s a book,” he says aloud.

Lorne stops midsentence, blinking at him. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “You’re holdin’ it.”

“Oh.” So he is. “Your … your sniper gave you all this? How come, how come he … he owe you?”

“Nah,” Lorne says, dropping down onto the couch a foot or so away from where the Scout is crouched on the floor, looking at the book in his hand. “He likes doin’ photos, I guess. We’re pals. I mean, I guess. Kinda.”

“Oh,” he says again. “I ain’t never talked to mine, I guess.”

“You kiddin’?”

The Scout shrugs. The world is spinning a little bit. “Don’t talk to none of ‘em. Just. I dunno, didn’t, ever. Talk, talk _at_ ‘em. Think that’s why, uh, because, y’know. You talk _at_ people enough, s’what happens, they quit listenin’, they think they got you figured out, they leave you alone. You act like enough of a pain in the ass an’ they leave you alone. Works every time.”

This time Lorne does not answer immediately, although the Scout fails to notice the pause. “Guess I ain’t ever tried that,” he says at last, picking at the label of the beer he’s holding. It might still be his first. “I mean, on purpose. Kinda just I act like a pain in the ass anyway.”

“Nobody wants t’freakin’ talk to a pain in the ass. That’s why.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe. Snipes is the only guy on my team I talk with even anyway. I dunno, he was the only other gay guy I knew, he’s the one I wound up talkin’ to.”

The Scout gives a long, exaggerated snort. “Your team’s got fuckin’ _two_ fags?”

“Oh my God, okay, look, you say that fuckin’ word to me again and I will kick your sorry drunken self-loathing ass, got it?” The Scout averts his eyes, grunting. “Yeah, good. An’ yeah, an’ so does yours, apparently, because I am pretty sure our Sniper is bangin’ your Spy, so stick that in your pipe an’ smoke it, huh? We are goddamn everywhere.”

Something uncomfortable has begun to slink through the Scout’s gut, and he is not sure if it is the gin or what Lorne has said. Either way, he gets to his feet. “… Bathroom?”

Lorne gives him a long, piercing look, and then then jerks his thumb toward the hall.


	17. 17: QUESTIONS & 18: MEAN

## 17. QUESTIONS

Ashley left, and the Scout got up to pour himself his own drink: the last little bit of cheap rum he had left, cut with cola. He could feel himself winding up a bit, vastly annoyed with this prick he’d let into his house. He leaned back against the counter and nursed the drink, thinking about his next move, until he heard his counterpart come ambling back.

Back into the living room, then, where he found Ashley looking more than a little lost. God, the gin was already half gone. Didn’t this guy know what he was doing? “Siddown before you fall over, yeah?” the Scout said, brushing past him to drop cross-legged onto the carpet. “Don’t want gin on my carpet.” Ashley looked down at him, frowned, and unsteadily followed suit.

“So!” the Scout went on when Ashley remained as boring as ever. “Tell me ‘bout your team, huh? You really ain’t talked to 'em?”

“Yeah. I mean, no, I ain’t, I dunno.”

“Cool. Who’s the hottest guy y'work with?”

That made Ashley screw up his face. Maybe he didn’t have enough gin in him yet. The Scout cut in before he could answer. “Me, gotta say, never thought any of 'em were nothin’ to friggin’ look at myself. Not on my team much neither for that matter. Snipes is alright but I am gonna be honest with you, he smells like stale coffee an’ piss jus’ twenty-four-seven. It is _rank_. Hey, d'you know what your Pyro looks like? Ours don’t ever take his mask off.”

“… Our Pyro’s a girl,” Ashley said a little grudgingly. “Black lady, uh, I dunno, maybe mixed. I guess she’s alright. Mostly she only talks t'Engineer.”

“Shit, huh. Now I am gonna be wonderin’ 'bout our Pyro. So how long you been goin’ to the Four Horsemen? I was thinkin’ about goin’ back this weekend.”

“Um,” Ashley said, and took a long drink.

 

 

 

 

## 18. MEAN

The first time the Scout had stepped into the Four Horsemen he had been freshly twenty-one and sporting a bloody nose. The bouncer had asked him why. The Scout told him it was the dry air. This did not account for the blood on his knuckles, but it was too dark for the bouncer to see.

It had been loud and alarming and not five minutes after walking in a lanky, crew-cropped guy had tried to get him to come on the dance floor with him. “Didja?” Lorne asks.

“I dunno how to do no dancin’.”

“Aw, club dancin’ ain’t dancin’. Mostly it’s just gropin’ people.”

“Whatever. No. I told him no an’ then he just asked if I wanted to fuck in the bathroom anyway.” He pauses. “He was real damn drunk.”

“Shit, man! People do that there?”

“I mean it ain’t _allowed_  but yeah, same as every other bar, yeah.”

“Well, did you do it?”

The Scout glares at him. “No.”

Lorne meets his gaze from where he’s sprawled on the carpet, looking unimpressed. He yawns, stretches. “Good, that’s how y'get herpes. Knew a guy had that happen back in Southie. Kinda he was a slut, though.”

“What, did he fuck dudes in bathrooms?”

“I dunno, but he gave me head in a park once.”

This is not information the Scout has signed up for. He watches Lorne, evidently wholly unaffected by sharing this fact, with a rising mixture of fascination and disgust. Despite himself he steals a glance at the crotch of Lorne’s jeans; nothing special to look at, really. “I haven’t ever,” he starts up again. “Just, um. Just go to the bar. Most every weekend. I dunno why. I haven’t ever done nothin’ like that.”

“Yeah, well, probably smart. If I lived in that fuckin’ hole you’re in I’d want to stay out of it much as possible too.”

“It ain’t … that bad …” As soon as the words leave his lips he knows they’re garbage. “It’s fine. It’s got a bed and a shower, I dunno.”

“Yeah? What d'you even do all day though, man? I get bored outta my freakin’ mind if I don’t at least got somethin’ to do with my hands at home.”

What did he do. What did he do? The Scout thinks about it, stalls, hesitates. “It’s fine,” he says again, more hesitantly. “It was there and I could afford it and it didn’t have nobody who knew me in it. It’s fine.”

Lorne grunts, looking out the window. The sun has vanished, and it is nearly dark in the little living room. “You sure like bein’ alone, huh.”

“I guess.”

“Explains why you’re such a mean bastard sometimes.”

“…I guess.”


	18. 19: HIGH TIDE & 20: BEHIND

## 19. HIGH TIDE

Ashley said, “I guess,” for the second time, and it sounded so plaintive that it gave the Scout pause. He actually felt a little bad. He had not counted on Ashley being a maudlin drunk. This was a problem; he did not want to feel bad for Ashley. Kind of he wanted to peel him apart bit by bit, lay him open—force him to admit to what he was—and then drop him like lead. This had been his plan. The Scout was not much one for forgiveness.

But maybe the rum was getting to him a bit more than he’d counted on, too, because instead of worrying Ashley further for the filthier details of his life, he asked, “Y’moved there because nobody knew you?”

Ashley had been staring down at the camera things still laid out on the floor. He blinked. “Mmn. Uh-huh. Um, a while ago. Maybe … maybe a year? Maybe two years. I don’t know.”

“What, you runnin’ from the cops or somethin’?”

The Scout had said it in jest, but the humor went out of it when Ashley’s gaze jerked up at him, both eyebrows raised. Before the Scout could say anything else, Ashley slid a hand up one side of his face, laughing in a stark and uncomfortable way. His fingers knotted up in his hair and he looked down at his drink. “Shit. Oh, man. Somethin‘—somethin’ like that, actually.” The glass found its way to his lips, and he took a huge gulp from it. “Not how you’re thinkin’. Yeah, though.”

“Not how I’m thinkin’, what, what’s that s’posed to mean?”

“I don’t gotta tell you anything,” Ashley shot back with an uncharacteristically wide grin. “God. I beat the, the absolute shit outta you. Your nose’s still crooked, did I do that? You are so fuckin’ nice to me. You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t be.”

Nice was perhaps a relative term. “Why not?”

“I am sick’a answerin’ your questions, answer mine. When’d you figure out you were gay?”

Well, fine, the Scout thought. He could play this game too. “When I was nine. Some’a my friends, they got one of those Playboy rags, right, all excited. Couldn’t figure out why. Didn’t say nothin’, though. Figured it out a little after that.”

“Virgin?”

“None of your business.”

“So yes?” Ashley drawled, looking bored. “Besides getting your dick sucked in a park.” The Scout could feel a sneer pulling at his lips. He was distracted from it when Ashley went on, “How’d you join BLU?”

“Killed somebody.”

It was, the Scout could tell, more of an answer than Ashley had been expecting. His jaw clamped shut and he squinted at him, as if trying to make sure he had heard him right. “Yeah?” he said.

The Scout snorted, looking back down at his drink. It was emptier than he would have thought. “Got in a fight. Down by the water, some of the docks. Knocked a guy down, boom, hits his head on boat, falls into the water. High tide.”

“And … what. You let him drown?”

“I can’t swim,” the Scout said, sharply. “I couldn’t reach him, he’d already floated out of reach. There wasn’t anyone else around to help, no life rings. And then, I mean. I was about to get outta town when some lady shows up on my doorstep.” He swallowed, scratching at the back of his neck. “There. Happy?”

 

 

 

 

## 20. BEHIND

The Scout doesn’t say anything, and Lorne curls in on himself. The house is very quiet. Warm, not unwelcoming, but quiet in an unpleasant way, now.

“They said they were only hirin’ me provisionally because I hadn’t ever killed anyone before,” the Scout says, without quite meaning to. “Like it was a, like I was supposed to have.”

The stillness only deepens. The Scout exhales, tries to take another drink, finds his cup empty. His head is swimming a bit. “My old man’s a cop,” he says at last. “So. So you got that right. I was runnin’ from the police.”

“You were running from your dad?”

Shit. Shit, no, no, he, he hadn’t meant to say that. Why had he said that? Why was he still talking? “Yeah. Um. Basically. Him and his wife.” His mouth is dry. He tries to swallow and it hurts. “They’re … I, I dunno. I think there was somethin’ wrong with ’em, both. Joan—Joan was drunk all the time. I mean, always.”

“Who?” Lorne asks, uncommonly quiet.

“His wife. My mom. And him, uh, Carver. He just. He, he was just … angry. All the time. Didn’t matter what about, he’d, he’d find a reason. Once I dropped a glass of orange juice on the floor and he …”

The Scout trails off, staring into the middle distance, tongue suddenly numb. “… doc said I might not ever walk right again,” he mutters, suddenly aware of the cup in his hand. He puts it down as far away as he can, with as much care as he can muster. “Foot got all swollen. Limped for a year. Got lucky.”

Lorne says something. It is quiet and under his breath and the Scout his not meant to hear it, and so he does not. Instead he takes a slow, deep breath, and forces himself to hold it for five seconds. He does not exactly feel better on the exhale, but at least it is something he can control.

“I stole some money,” he goes on again, when he can. “Ran. My brother, um. Casey. He did the same thing. ‘Cept he stole it from our parents, and Casey wasn’t there for Carver to get mad at, so …“ He gestures vaguely. ”That’s why. That’s why I just stole it from some gas station. I didn’t want—God. Fuck,“ he says, and realizes only now that his cheeks are warm and his throat is tight. ”Salem didn’t deserve havin’ that happening twice. G-God. I left him behind.”

“Salem?” Lorne says quietly, but the Scout has already felt the life going out of him, leaving him frozen with his hand knotted in his hair, staring at the carpet.


	19. 21: PITY & 22: FEAR

## 21. PITY

Somewhere a clock began to toll. The Scout counted ten strikes, and wondered how the day had slipped away so suddenly. His nose hurt, a dull throb, and had ever since Ashley pointed out the fact that it was indeed still crooked. Possibly it would always be crooked. He pawed at it, lacking words, lacking something better to do with his hands.

Ashley had become a gargoyle, frozen and stony and staring off into some distant past. The Scout considered repeating his question, and thought better of it.

Instead he got up, swayed more than he anticipated, narrowly avoided falling, and picked his way over the photography gear and the warm carpet to sink down at Ashley’s side. He was closer than he’d anticipated, too, and he could feel the heat of Ashley’s body on his skin.

Ashley stirred, just barely. He flexed his fingers, slow and deliberate; the Scout looked at them for the first time, really looked, and was more surprised by the amount of scars on his knuckles than he thought he maybe should have been. The skin was warped and rough, old silver scars covered by scabbing red scrapes. The bones on some of them looked wrong, sticking out or sunken too far. They looked like he’d been punching walls. Maybe he had.

The Scout looked at them for a long time. Something about them made him feel sick.

“Sorry,” the Scout said.

“… It’s just,” Ashley answered, “What can you do?”

“No,” the Scout said, “I mean sorry about this.”

 

 

 

 

## 22. FEAR

The Scout has just turned his head to look at Lorne when suddenly his hand is not lying on top of his drawn-up knees anymore. Lorne has reached out and taken it, his pale skin warm against the Scout’s, and has brought it over to his own knee. The Scout stares dumbfounded as his counterpart carefully stretches out each digit, fingertips skating over the scars and bruising leftover from the fight at the bus stop. He does not think to try pulling away until a stray brush of Lorne’s index finger against his ring finger sends a shudder down his spine. “What’re—st, stop,” he says, trying to extricate himself.

Lorne’s grip on his hand tightens. “No. Said sorry. You gotta deal with it.”

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know, okay, lay off. Your hands look like shit. You, you just do not take care of yourself at all, do ya?” Lorne says, not exactly sharp but almost frustrated. “Whaddya been doin‘, punching brick? Goddamn. _You_ look like shit, and that, that creepy apartment. Oh my God, I thought I was gonna find like a dead cat in there when I was pickin’ it up. You sleep on a _box spring._ ” He falls silent as he kneads the back of the Scout’s hand, and if the Scout hadn’t felt a bit like he was about to be dropped from a noose he might have been able to admit that it was a nice sensation. “And you don’t look at your damn bank account, shit. I bet you are richer than God, you don’t gotta live in that rat trap.”

“It’s not …” Lorne cuts his gaze up sharply. The Scout swallows, and looks aside. “… it’s kinda a rat trap.”

“It is scary as hell and I thought I was gonna get murdered the first time I went in there. I’m. Shit. I’m gonna take you househunting. Okay? We’re gonna do that. We’re not gonna do it tomorrow because I am gonna be hungover as _fuck_ in the morning on account of I am more of a delicate fuckin’ flower than I got any right to be but we’re gonna do it.”

The Scout’s mouth has gone dry. There’s a pounding in his temples. It worsens when Lorne slides his hand down and slips their fingers together, tightening gently, and he wonders if it’s the tightness in his chest that is going to kill him, or the dizzying sense of nameless want that engulfs him when Lorne looks up at him again.


	20. 23: BED & 24: RECEIPT & 25: NDA

## 23. BED

It is eleven o’clock in the morning when the Scout opens his eyes and looks at the millions of tiny stipple dots texturing the cream-colored ceiling. For a moment he thinks he must be at work. The ceiling of his apartment is dirty white with uneven whorls, and cigarette smoke stains blacken the spot his bed rests beneath.

He shifts, pushes himself up on his arm, and stares stupidly at the full-sized mattress he is lying on. The sun pools lazily over the blue comforter he’s buried in, filtering through slotted blinds over an open window, and the smell of fresh bread hits him like a truck. He starts to salivate, and in the same moment realizes his mouth tastes like horrible fuzzy death.

He needs water, and to eat, and there’s a sharp pressure in his bladder that is now making itself known. He is alone in what is revealed to be a sparsely decorated room with a mess of clothes and knicknacks, and a single silver alarm clock ticks to itself quietly. It is 11:03. The Scout is not expecting the sheer distance from the mattress to the floor and nearly twists his ankle trying to get out of bed.

He pads barefoot down the wooden flooring of the hallway, looking for a bathroom and trying to remember what the hell had happened. Not much comes to mind. It takes him until he is halfway through gargling a mouthful of water to realize he’s been in this bathroom before. He is still in Lorne’s house.

The water splatters against the bowl of the sink with more force than he had anticipated. It splashes back up and hits his shirt, which he is slowly realizing has developed the grimy sensation that accompanies wearing the same clothes for too long. This is familiar. It’s almost comforting.

Just as familiar, but less comforting, is the long few minutes he stares at the mirror and tries to remember what happened last night. He had come to pick up something from Lorne’s house. There had been the sharp pine-scent of gin. Possibly he had said some things. He lingered at this thought, piecing together the sickness it stirs inside him. That’s unfamiliar. He doesn’t say things he regrets, because he never says anything. He is much more used to waking up covered in bruises and vomit and blood.

What did he say, he wonders. Whose bed had he woken up in? Lorne’s, of course, he answers himself, and the sickness takes a sharp dive into panic. Lorne’s bed. Where was Lorne? He couldn’t remember anything leading up to going to bed. Lorne’s bed. Why was he in Lorne’s bed? What has he done?

But he is still wearing the same clothes he put on yesterday, he remembers. Perhaps he hasn’t done anything. He’s woken up in stranger places.

All the same he is wide awake and hungry and nervous, now, and all of it together drives him back down the hallway to peer again into the room he woke up in. It is as empty as he left it.

The living room, however, is not. Lorne is there on the couch, his shirt strewn on the floor, dead asleep. This is a relief. The Scout keeps one eye on him as he quietly pulls together the camera things he had initially come over for, and then without fanfare he gets his shoes and slips out the door.

 

 

 

 

## 24. RECEIPT

He’s still thinking about the night he lost at Lorne’s. It’s unusual, and the Scout doesn’t think he likes it.

In a concerted effort to stop thinking about it, he has dug into the camera gear Lorne has given him. He’s read the manuals three times, he’s gone to the library and found their books on photography. He can’t remember the last time he read a book; he’s surprised to learn he actually enjoys it. He buys a strap for the camera. He begins to take it everywhere.

For some reason he can’t fathom, about a week later, he visits the bank. He has the distinct idea someone had told him he should do this, but could not have said who for the life of him. He inquires about his balance. He has to ask the teller to repeat herself twice, and when he gets the receipt he takes it and sits on the curb for a lot longer than he means to, staring down at it. The number is simply unreal. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He so entirely doesn’t know that he somehow finds himself on Lorne’s doorstep later that afternoon, in the pouring rain, receipt in one hand, camera in the other.

And Lorne, leaning on his countertop, slowly making his way through some frigid lemonade, turns the receipt over in his hand and just says, “Yeah, looks right. I knew you had to’ve got somethin’ close to this.”

“It—really?”

“Sure, man,” he says, tossing it down on the table where the Scout is fiddling with the lens of his camera, dripping like a wet dog. “You got more than me even, since you ain’t spent none of it, I figure.”

“What’m I … mmn. Shit. What, what do I even do with that much money? I don’t … I mean …”

“Don’t be weird, c’mon. You do whatever you want, it’s your cash.” Lorne looks him over for a few seconds, something guarded in his face. Distant. Then he looks away, exhales, and in another instant he’s beaming. “Sure, hell, first things first, though. We gotta get you outta that awful hole you call home.”

 

 

 

 

## 25. NDA

It took two days, five apartment viewings, and an exorbitant amount of beer before Ashley would explain about where he lived. “It’s just, it’s how it is, right,” he said over a late lunch at the one fancy-ass little bistro the Scout liked to hit up now and then. “I got out as soon as I could. Anything was better’n home, an’ I got used to it, you, you know? You can get used to anything. And I got, I got the crazy merc job and I liked it and I just didn’t ever stop to see what they were payin’ me.”

“You liked workin’ for RED so much you didn’t think about the pay?”

“I still like it, man, come on. I get in fights, it’s what I do, I’m good at it.” Ashley shrugged, taking a fierce first of bite out of his sandwich. He froze, mouth full, and forced it down. The Scout barely heard him whimper _holy shit_ before he took another huge bite. It was sort of cute, he thought before he could help himself; when he did he gave himself a savage shake. No. Ashley was not an option, he was a target. At _best_ he was a charity project. This did not prevent Lorne from watching him a little too closely as he ate. It maybe should have.

“… Yeah, well,” he got out eventually, looking out over the restaurant. It was the slower part of the day; they were mostly alone. “I guess some of us gotta enjoy it.”

“What, you don’t?”

“Are you nuts? You’ve beat the shit outta me before. I go down like a dandelion.”

“You’re tough as fuck, though.”

“No I ain’t, I am good at not gettin’ hit, and that’s on account’a I spent a lotta years learnin’ how not to get my ass kicked,” he snorted. “It ain’t fun for me, if you really wanna know, it’s mostly just stressful. It’s a job an’ I do it ‘cause my family needs the cash. Needed. Fuck. I dunno even why I’m doin’ it anymore, I’m richer’n God and they won’t take any of it.”

Ashley had worked his way through most of his sandwich in about two minutes. He set it down, now, reaching for his drink, and did something the Scout had never seen him do before: watch him, and carefully. Considering him. “Your family won’t?” he asked.

“Mmn. Yeah. Dunno. They don't like I won't tell them how I get it. NDA, and all."

Quiet, then. Ashley didn’t seem to know what to say. The Scout could hardly blame him. “So, so anyway,” he picked up, trying to shrug the rising black cloud off of him, “all that bullshit, who cares, ain’t about me. You like any of those places we saw?”

Ashley shrugged. “I dunno, I guess. I mean, they were nice. They were fine. I guess I don’t care.”

“We gotta work on you an’ caring about things.”

“Maybe,” Ashley admitted.


	21. 26: SMOKE & 27: FIRE & 28: ASHES & 29: EMBERS

##  ****26. SMOKE

And then, not two days later, the Scout opened his front door to the sight of a distinctly disheveled Ashley, loosely clutching a backpack, stinking of smoke. “Um,” he said, wetting cracked lips, “So my apartment burned down.”

The Scout blinked, once, slowly. He shifted his weight, leaning on the door. “Well,” he started, “then I guess you had better come in.”

 

 

 

 

## 27. FIRE

It had been ten in the evening and it had been fine and the Scout had been thinking about how he should maybe get himself a bed as nice as Lorne’s had been, because his boxspring suddenly seemed lackluster, and then there had been a lot of noise and a lot of motion and the next thing the Scout knew was that he was standing on the sidewalk with the rest of the apartment tenants, watching his home go up in flames.

He doesn’t tell Lorne this, mostly. Not that part anyway. No, they aren’t sure how it started. No, he isn’t going to be able to go back, the whole building was so old and unsound that it had half-collapsed before the firefighters even got there. No, he doesn’t know what his plan is. The Scout doesn’t make plans. Not really.

“I mean, shit,” Lorne says presently. “Good riddance, right? Sounds like a miracle to me, now you got double reason to find a new place to live.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do, huh?”

 

 

 

 

## 28. ASHES

It was driving the Scout insane, the way he was getting to be around Ashley. He didn’t _want_ to be his friend. He didn’t _want_ to let him into his house without a second thought. He _wanted_ to drop him from some great height and shatter him, to smother him out and kick the ashes.

None of what he was doing was putting him closer to that goal.

Ashley had beaten the shit out of him, had called him slurs, had taken the thing about the Scout that he had spent so much time and energy learning to be okay with and shredded it. The day after their encounter behind the Four Horsemen the Scout had lost it for the first time in months, working his way through an entire bottle of wine and spending the evening in a haze of disgrace and self-loathing. And _then_ Ashley had kicked him half to death.

And now Ashley was sitting at his kitchen table—again—looking lost and small. He was completely pathetic. It should have been the kind of pathetic that was ugly and disgusting. Instead, the more and more of Ashley that the Scout saw, the larger his urge to simply take his hand and help him to his feet became.

He didn’t want to.

“You can stay here tonight if you don’t got anywhere else to go.”

But here he was, anyway.

 

 

 

 

## 29. EMBERS

He lifts his head and it’s sort of hard. It takes the Scout a little bit to process what Lorne has said. “Um,” he says, once he does, “you sure?”

And Lorne has that look on his face again, the one that makes the Scout feel sort of sick and nervous. It’s a steady and piercing stare, and the Scout can’t relax when he knows he’s being monitored. Not sober, anyway. There’s something in the corners of his eyes and of his mouth, something flinty, and it makes his stomach drop.

He slowly makes the connection that it is the same feeling he gets when confronted with something he knows he cannot stop.

“Sure,” says Lorne, a single word, and the flint snaps out of his face like ice shattering. The smile grows warm. A hearth, full of embers. He thinks if he looks for too long he might burn himself. “Couch is all yours. Don’t look like you got much outta there with you, huh?”

The Scout blinks, following Lorne’s gaze over to his single backpack. In truth it is full of brand new clothes, bought hours ago. He only escaped the fire with one thing. “The only thing I managed to grab was my camera.”

He doesn’t look at Lorne again, and misses the way the embers flare.


	22. 30: REPOSE & 31: TENSION & 32: RELEASE

## 30. REPOSE

Ashley moved in, for the time being. He slept on the couch and for the first time the Scout really started to suss out what it was like to be around him; what it was like to be his teammate, probably. It was just as Ashley had said, on that night in the Scout’s living room: he talked _at_ you, a constant prattle about nothing in particular, like he couldn’t stand the silence. It was a marked departure from his semi-stoicism of before. The Scout wondered what it meant.

Mostly Ashley talked about nothing. He talked shit about the couch and the house and the food, he’d keep up running commentary if the radio was on, he’d come back from house-hunting and bitch about the realtors. It was annoying to listen to. It was _exactly_ as Ashley had said. _You act like enough of a pain in the ass and they leave you alone._ The Scout found himself avoiding him more often than not.

Sometimes, though, the stars would align, and Ashley would talk about his camera. Or about the pictures he had taken, or a new book on photography he’d found somewhere. This was different from his white-noise talking. This sparked something in him. If the Scout asked a single question about the photos, it would unleash a cascade of explanations and recollections that was fascinating in its passion. The photographs were starting to build up; Ashley got an album to put them in.

Then he ran out of film. And _then_ he ran out of a decent schedule. For a week the Scout had to try and sleep through Ashley making noise in the living room at three in the morning, because he had stopped going anywhere else. And on the one day he didn’t make a racket—insomnia. Great.

At four-thirty in the morning, with a long-suffering sigh, the Scout got out of bed. And sure enough, there was Ashley on the couch, in a sleeveless white tee and shorts he had possibly been wearing for a week. The Scout looked him over, once, twice. The only light was a streetlamp streaming in through the open window, and he wished it wouldn’t light Ashley up the way it did: all long limbs, all angles and wiry muscle, sprawled out, and, for once, not coiled into tension.

The Scout reached out and smacked his bare shin, and was rewarded with a flinch. “Dude, okay, look, I need you to get up an’ friggin’ do somethin‘, you are leavin’ a dent in the couch.”

Ashley, lying on his back with a pillow over his head, gave him the bird. “Go’way.”

“No, you are gettin’ off your ass an’ going outside with me, good goddamn. Mopin’ like a jackass all week, ain’t gone looked at apartments, just ’cuz you’re all outta film, sheesh. Thought you said you ordered more, what’s the big deal?”

“S’gonna take another week to get here. Airmail an’ everything.”

“You are a baby. Get the hell up, we are goin’ running.”

Ashley lifted the pillow off his face, squinting dubiously out at him. His hair was getting long. “Don’t wanna. Ain’t, ain’t it like five AM, anyway, thought you kept a normal person schedule.”

“We are goin’ _running._ ”

 

 

 

 

## 31. TENSION

So they go running.

The Scout has not been running in nearly a month, and it’s this startling realization that makes him agree to do it. He doesn’t want to, he knows it’s going to feel like hell since he’s been out of practice for so long, but the moment their feet hit the pavement they are off.

It takes a while, building back up to it, especially after being out of it for so long. They jog, at first, but each to the other is like prey before a greyhound. Speeding up, then, gradual, more and more, a silent rising refusal to be outpaced, until they are galloping neck-and-neck.

And the Scout remembers why he runs. He can feel himself leaving himself behind, shedding burdens, shaking off old skin. The air scrapes away at him as they tear down the nearly-empty streets, ripping off excess things like memory and identity and self. Faster, now, breathing harder, fresh things in, old things out, the impact of every step a bad jolt to his brain until the only thing left in him is the motion, motion, motion, a constant mechanical process, and nothing of the Scout is left at all.

And he is ripped out of it when something grabs him by the shirt collar and chokes him to a halt.

There’s noise and a surge of bright light and a sour red taste on his tongue. Pain and more noise and then he collides with something warm and solid, and all of it falls to the pavement.

The Scout stares after the car that has nearly hit him as it leans on the horn again and shoots down into the opposite alleyway, and does not see it. Then something is pushing him off and away. He turns, halfway, and on an instinct just as mechanical as running raises a fist to bear down on the bastard under him.

But he’s slow, or else the bastard is faster, because something else warm shoots out and grabs him by the wrist, and then the warm thing is on top of him instead of under him. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” snaps Lorne, snatching the Scout’s other hand and forcing both down to the pavement. “I am not lettin’ you fuckin’ punch me out for saving your life!”

The sneer that draws itself across his face feels ugly. “Geddoff, fuck you,” says a voice like his, trying to yank his arms back. He gets a knee stabbing into his gut for his effort.

Lorne doesn’t answer, nor does he let him up. He stares down at him for a long time, in silence, until all the chaff the Scout has left behind him comes rubber-banding back. He goes from a bristling animal to a blinking young man, whose throat and tongue suddenly hurt a lot more than they did a minute ago. Lorne is sitting on his hips, a heavy, present weight that the Scout takes too long in comprehending, and his palms are hot and slick against the Scout’s wrists. “Get off,” he says again, clearer now, and this time Lorne obeys.

“What was that?” Lorne demands as he gets back to his feet, brushing himself off. The Scout stays down at first, touching two fingers to his lips and looking at the blood on his skin. Every inch of him is tension. “I toldja watch out, the headlights was right there, it honked.”

“Didn’t see it.”

This gets him a stare. Lorne runs his tongue along his teeth. There is something contemplative in his face. The Scout scarcely notices, caught up in rubbing his wrists. He can’t get the heat from Lorne’s hands to leave. Tension. Tension.

“Alright, well,” he says at last, “maybe we oughta just walk a while.”

 

 

 

 

## 32. RELEASE

They end up by docks, because of course they do. And right on the money the Scout’s legs have gone to rubber, angry with him for his laziness. When Lorne sits down at the edge of the pier, it is a welcome break. They kick off their shoes and the high tide rushes over their feet as they dangle over the edge.

It’s a small dock, not heavily trafficked. What fishermen kept their boats here had already taken them out onto the water, waking up with the fish. There’s no one else around and the loudest sound is the gentle lapping of the waves and the Scout’s own breathing. It’s the latter he focuses on as he stares off at the horizon, where the sun is just beginning to rise. And when he says, “Wish I had my camera,” his own voice startles him.

And in answer, quietly, “Yeah?”

A sidelong glance shows him Lorne sitting crosslegged, elbows on his knees, watching him. Not even watching—studying, more, all quiet contemplation. The Scout swallows and the salt air scratches his throat. “Yeah, like, see,” and he lifts his hands, holding thumb and forefinger of each at right angles to form a frame. “Got a real good shot here, see that boat way out there? Big sail on it? It’s floatin’ out kinda north, now, in a minute or two, bet you it’s gonna end up square in the middle’a the sun. Wouldn’t be worth takin’ no picture, otherwise. Gotta have that stuff in the foreground or it ain’t interesting, sunrise is a sunrise, a sunrise is like, I dunno, caramel sauce on ice cream. Makes it better, but you don’t wanna just eat the sauce.”

“I ate caramel sauce outta the jar all the time growin’ up.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a friggin’ weirdo.”

Lorne laughed, and it sounded breathless. “Yeah, well. Maybe I am. What is it about that camera, anyway, with you?”

The Scout stiffens. “What’s it t’you?”

“Aw, c’mon,” Lorne says, placating. “I don’t mean it that way, look, sorry. Just I didn’t get much sleep last night, go easy on me.” And perhaps he’s telling the truth, because his voice is uncharacteristically soft. “Didn’t figure you’d get so into it, was a surprise.”

And—sudden self-consciousness. Sudden awkwardness, sudden shock, because all at once the Scout realizes he wants to give him a straight answer. He could not give him bullshit if he tried. He only has the truth. “W-well. Uh. I dunno, I like … I like havin’ memories I can hold onto, I guess. Ones I get to pick how they look, what they’re gonna make me remember.”

He snaps his mouth shut, awaiting some derisive comment. It spawned no such thing. “Cool,” Lorne says sleepily, looking out at the sunrise again, and the sailboat ebbing toward the end of the world. “That’s real cool, man. Wouldn’t’a thought you had it in you. Shows how much I know, huh?” And, “Glad you like it.”

The Scout’s legs ache, from the run. His lungs feel still empty of air. He is a bit dizzy, still, though from runner’s high or smacking his skull on the pavement or something else, he could not have said.

The whole world feels all at once both too large and too small, and empty of anything but the Scout and the sea. And Lorne.

When he leans over and takes Lorne by the chin, careful, fingers not quite steady, he catches for a split second the flash of surprise in his face, and it sends a shudder of dread through him. But when he kisses him, clumsy, hungry, Ashley feels only release, washing over him like the tide lapping at their feet.


	23. 33: ANCHOR & 34: DROWN & 35: SAFE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Content Warning(s):**  
>  _use of self-directed slur ("faggot")_  
> 

## 33. ANCHOR

A seagull came to a splashing halt in the harbor, scattering a school of tiny smelt hovering near the surface. Another joined it a moment later, stirring up a chorus of whistling and warbling. Somewhere a steam engine roared, distant. Far off on the horizon, just as Ashley had said, the sailboat had drifted enough to be framed by the rising sun. Lorne was dimly aware of all of these things, as Ashley kissed him, slowly and with great care. Like he was wary of breaking him. Far in the distance, southward, he caught the lonely silhouette of a lighthouse, standing like a witness.

He had closed his eyes in reflex at first. He had opened them again, as if that would do much good in helping him fully grasp the situation. If he were quite honest, he was not very familiar with kissing. It wasn’t something he’d done a whole lot of. It felt too intimate, generally, given most of his history only involved handjobs and half-drunk groping. The one he had stolen from Ashley behind the bar that night had been an act of defiance, a final fuck-you. A certain nervousness started scraping its way through him, crawling on his neck like an insect or something worse. And Ashley’s mouth wasn’t the most pleasant-tasting thing he’d ever kissed, and he was clumsy, like maybe he’d never kissed anyone before—and maybe he hadn’t—but that was not what made him gingerly splay his palm out on Ashley’s chest and push him off.

Ashley did not resist, letting himself be moved. He was flushed and pink, color all through his cheeks and his crooked nose. Lorne blinked up at him, looked back down at the sea, and pawed at his face. Felt the dampness on his lips. “Ash …”

The water came rushing in. It sloshed against the dock, leaping up, catching his legs as the tide returned to the shore. Lorne drew his hands into his lap and looked down at them, with their bitten nails and freckled skin. He needed to look at Ashley, he thought. He couldn’t just sit here.

He did, though. It was as though the wind had been taken from his sails, and he was left adrift. The silence between them grew heavier and heavier, an anchor, and the chain had to be tied around his neck, because he couldn’t lift his head.

Then Ashley got to his feet, hard and too loud against the peace of daybreak. Lorne scarcely got to look up before the wood shook under the force of Ashley breaking into a sprint. This at last put him back into motion, scrambling up, chasing after. “Wait!”

Ashley did not wait. Ashley kept bolting, pouring on the speed. Lorne saw him clear a mess of flotsam left on the boards, nearly trip over a pile of life rings and rope, he was just running without direction. Lorne leaned into the wind, desperately trying to catch up as the salt air burned his lungs.

He saw the puddle. He saw it, but he didn’t register it. When he hit it the wrong way, when his leg twisted on wet algae and slime, the only thing he managed to get out before he pitched sideways into the water and began to sink was a single terrified shriek.

 

 

 

 

## 34. DROWN

 _Stupid fucking_ **_stupid_** _idiot moron_ **_faggot_** _why did I_ **_do that?_**

Ashley had felt the sinking feeling lurch through him as soon as Lorne had put his hand on his chest. It had consumed him at an alarming rate, a whole parade of ugly thoughts in familiar voices. It’s old hat, but it doesn’t hurt any less just because he’s accustomed to it.

He can’t be here. He maybe can’t be anywhere, right now. He doesn’t even realize he’s gotten up, until he has, and he’s already too far gone to hear Lorne shouting after him. This dock is unfamiliar, he was checked out when they arrived and he’s checked out now and he’s not entirely sure how to escape the maze of wood and boats. And he needs to _escape_ , he cannot be cornered, he cannot face Lorne, he needs to be _gone._

It is this thought, and only this, that keeps him together, that keeps him from flying apart like one of Demo’s bombs. It is this thought that slows him at an intersection, trying to remember where to go, and it is because this thought slows him that he hears the shriek and the splash.

It is such a depature from what his brain has geared itself for that something short-circuits. It snaps him out of his panic and instinct, and for some reason he looks behind him, and somehow, he sees the churning, rolling water, broken up by flashes of Lorne’s red hair and pale skin.

He stands there at first, confused. Something catches at him in the back of his mind, a snag, what? He’s not—he isn’t used to this. He doesn’t stop in the middle of things to _think,_ and certainly he doesn’t think about anything he heard or said while he was drunk.

But entirely unbidden he does remember, clear as day, Lorne glaring daggers at him, admitting he could not swim.

He clears the distance between himself and the spot where Lorne is beginning to drown before he can even think about doing so. He’s down on his hands and knees a heartbeat after that. Some other part of him is kicking in, the part that had once had the dust shaken off of it and been brought out to learn about boats and about water. About what to do when someone fell overboard.

There is a life ring in his hands and he doesn’t even know where he got it. Now it’s gone, now it’s in the water, almost on top of Lorne, because even on his worst days Ashley always could hit a target with deadly accuracy. And now there’s the rope in his hands, wrapped around his wrists, and he’s hooked himself against a dock post by one arm by the time Lorne’s frantic panicking allows him to seize the ring.

Rasping, shallow gasps rake the air. Lorne has the life ring in a death grip. Ashley stays rooted to the spot, his mind blank as he waits for Lorne’s breathing to settle, waits until it’s safe to pull him closer and drag him back onto the dock. When he does, Lorne staggers forward and all but collapses onto him, dragging them both to their knees. His hand has caught in Ashley’s shirt as tight as it had caught the life ring.

They remain that way, a while. Occasionally Lorne coughs up more saltwater, occasionally Ashley remembers why he had started running. Each time he does he feels like his own stomach has filled up with the ocean, and all he wants is to get back to his feet and run again, but he can’t. Lorne will not let go, even when Ashley tries to pry him off. His grip only tightens.

The sun is almost all the way up when Lorne says, creaky and groggy, “I’m sorry,” and Ashley can feel his own brain flicker like a faulty bulb. His gaze cuts sideways. Lorne, finally, lets go of his shirt. He hopes he will just get up, just walk away, just leave him here in his humiliation.

Instead, Lorne’s hand slides up to Ashley’s shoulder. It lingers there, holding but loose. Lorne coughs again. “I am. I shouldn’t’a—it’s just—”

“Don’t, okay, don’t, I—I don’t wanna hear it.” Ashley’s voice feels empty and powerless and he feels fifteen again, helpless again. “Let me go.”

“I’m, no. I won’t, not, just hear me out. Hear me out, okay?” Ashley keeps his eyes fixed on the water, head bent, rigid, paralyzed, gone again. “Ash. Please?”

He swallows. The motion hurts. “Fine.”

“I shouldn’t, I, I wanted to say earlier but you … I mean you ran off. I shouldn’t’a done it like that, um. Fuck, man, it’s not—it’s just. You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t go for me, okay? You can … you can do better. You don’t want me.”

The words are oil. They trickle down through his ear to the rest of him, to the frozen gears and joints, and it’s a start. It lets him glance Lorne’s way. “What?”

Lorne grins, weakly. His chin is still wet, his hair is limp and saturated and looks dirty brown. “I mean it. I’m … I ain’t what I been showing you, okay? I had this whole … this whole plan, ever since you beat the shit outta me in the train yard, I was so pissed with you between that and with, um, with the bar. With how you went off on me. I had this whole plan where I wanted to make nice with you an’ get to be your friend and—and then backstab you. Really fuck you over, just ’cause you pissed me off.” He breaks off, breaks eye contact. “Shit, Ash, I wanted to break your heart.”

The sun has all but risen, now. It lights up the harsh ocean and in the distance Ashley can see the lighthouse, standing like a lone guardsman. Its great eye flashes at him suddenly, still awake, and nearly blinds him. The air feels hot and humid. He wonders if he is drowning.

 

 

 

 

## 35. SAFE

Lorne had been building up this entire speech, in his head. A whole confessional that had apparently been building up the last few weeks. He’d always had his mean streak, his vengeful side, but he’d never had the guilt or shame to temper it with before. And it was true his efforts had faded, as he and Ashley became closer, but he had told himself he was just waiting for the right moment to pull the rug out from under him. It was a little ironic, then, that when Ashley said, “That’s fine,” he felt a little like he’d been pushed down the stairs himself.

“What?” he started, bewildered. Under his hand Ashley was a warm, solid thing, almost too real. His grip slackened. “It’s—no it’s not, it’s, that’s, it’s fucked up and awful. Especially si—”

“It’s fine,” Ashley repeated, distant. “ Get what’s comin’ to me, r-right. I deserve it, even, probably.”

“No you don’t!” Lorne burst out. His grip tightened, he shook him by the shoulder. “Shit! You, I mean sure, yeah, you can be a real rough son of a bitch but it ain’t your fault, that ain’t all on you! Why—why would you even say a thing like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like _‘that’s fine’_!”

Ashley looked at him. Just looked at him, from somewhere far away. Lorne had heard about the thousand-yard stare. He had never seen it before. “Because,” he said, “you were … you did all those things for me. Let me stay in your house and gave me your camera, and just, all that.”

“But—”

“No, see, just, it don’t matter, okay? It’s just, you were … you did those things. No one’s ever … you let me feel like somebody liked me. It was nice.” He covered his face with one hand. “Fuck. And you hate me, ’course you do. Jesus.”

“I don’t hate you,” Lorne said, pleading. “I don’t, really I don’t.”

“Then—then I’ll stay. I’ll stay with you, okay?”

Ashley’s voice cracked as he said it. It was a seam ripping, or a branch breaking. It tore Lorne right down the middle of him, through his very core. He was still soaked through, dripping wet, but he wrapped both arms around Ashley, gathered him against himself, and held him tight even as he felt the startled flinch, the shallow breathing. It was a good thing, too, as Ashley fell to pieces and shook in his arms, burying his face in his neck.

Lorne would never be able to pinpoint, exactly, when he first began to press chaste and tender kisses to Ashley’s hair, to his forehead, tilting his chin back to kiss his cheek and crooked nose. It was suddenly his whole world, or most of it. It was incomplete until Ashley shuddered and turned his face to catch Lorne’s lips in his own again. This time Lorne returned it in kind.

The ocean carried on as it always had. Sea birds wheeled in the air overhead, salt saturated the air, comforting and familiar. Ashley’s arms tentatively encircled Lorne’s back in the same moment that the distant lighthouse, satisfied with the safety of the day, put out its light.


	24. 1: MESSENGER & 2: JACKRABBIT

##  **_BOOK III:  
_** IS IT TOO LATE TO  
COME ON HOME?

 

 

 

## 1. MESSENGER

The sun had risen, and crossed the sky, and was hanging low in the sky, now. And they had gone home, their new and sudden bond largely undiscussed. Lorne had washed the salt water out of his hair and changed out of his stiff clothes, and then promptly dragged Ashley off to bed with him. Ashley had been a bit predictably weird about this, but it was fine. Mostly Lorne had just wanted him nearby, maybe because he wasn’t quite sure if he had not actually drowned and all this was the hallucinations of his last moments.

When he woke up some hours later, though, Ashley was still there, watching him with tired eyes. “Didja sleep?” Lorne asked first, yawning and rubbing at his face.

“Um. Uh, h-hi. No. I don’t think, no.”

“Oughta.”

“Mmn.”

Whether or not he did, Lorne never really found out. He passed out again, and when he awoke again it was because he was being violently shaken. The telephone was ringing. “What, knock it off!”

“Get _up_ ,” Ashley hissed, shoving him. “Shit, you are like a dead guy, look, Spy’s outside, he’s on the porch!”

Lorne blinked. “What?” he said, and Ashley all but bodily hauled him to the floor.

So: the RED Spy was standing on his doorstep. It was definitely the RED Spy, balaclava and all. It took some hushed conferencing between them to sort out what to do about it, and by then the phone had stopped ringing.

It was decided that Lorne would open it, and Ashley would hide in the closet to listen. Ash had scarcely clapped it shut when Lorne yanked the front door open and was met with the sight of the enemy spy peering down his sharp nose at him. “H’llo?” Lorne began, unsure whether or not playing dumb would help or harm him.

“Good evening,” the spy said smoothly. He paused, deliberating. “I’m sure you know me?”

“Been stabbed in the ribs by you enough,” Lorne said, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The RED spy, though, only smirked. “What’re … what are you doing here?”

“As it happens I am looking for one of my teammates. His apartment burned down, evidently, and he left no forwarding address. Which is unsurprising, frankly. He always was a bit … scattered.” The spy straightened up, adjusting his collar. “But I digress. My initial inquiries suggest he had relocated here, but it would seem that perhaps my informants were incorrect, and had mistaken you for him.”

“I guess, then,” Lorne said, scrambling for something to say, something to throw him off. “Didn’t know he lived ‘round here, figured he was some New Yorker. Stupid accent an’ all. Uh, small world.”

“Indeed,” the spy said. He had shifted his weight, resting his chin on one gloved hand as he looked Lorne over. “You have a remarkable sense of intuition, it would seem. I believe I failed to specify _which_ teammate.”

Lorne’s jaw snapped shut, at roughly the same time that a crashing noise and muted shout issued from the closet.

The spy looked first at the closet, and then at Lorne, who was weighing the pros and cons of jumping him while he had the chance. He shifted his weight, tapped his chin, and seemed to come to some decision. “Very well,” he said now, “you have not seen him. Perhaps if you _do_ see him, you could let him know that he ought to arrange some other means of contact so that RED need not send a messenger next time—and that our next match begins tomorrow.”

Lorne stared up at him, slack-jawed. The RED spy blinked, once, owlishly. “And do be careful. It means nothing to me if he knows you, but I cannot say the same for our employers.”

He was gone as quickly as he came. Lorne was left standing in the doorway, staring after him as he disappeared in the growing summer darkness, until Ashley tumbled out of the closet behind him.

 

 

 

 

## 2\. JACKRABBIT

Of course it's the Frontier bases, because RED and BLU are about as far apart from one another as they can get there. Ashley---the Scout, again, for now---has scarcely been back in uniform for twelve hours before the paranoia sets in. He wants to see Lorne, if only to ensure the last twenty-four hours haven't been some fever dream.

No such luck, though. The next day they cross each other’s paths only once or twice, and the shots taken are markedly different from before. Ashley is more on point than Lorne, clipping his counterpart in the thigh with birdshot. Lorne drops, but Ash doesn’t have it in him to finish him off. Instead he rushes off under pretense of needing to get back to the cart that’s slowly encroaching on his team’s territory.

Everything on him feels like it prickles, and his clothes feel too tight, despite being the same uniform he’s always worn. When the match ends for the day, he follows the team back into the base long enough to grab some water and to wait for the sun to go down. He then makes a loud display of saying that he’s going to go running, so that no one will come looking for him, and bolts outside.

And he does run. He rolls through the territory like a steam engine, never stopping, scarcely looking where he is going, and making a point of avoiding the BLU base. He doesn’t need an infraction, he doesn’t want any eyes on him. Being watched does something to him, he realizes as he runs, and wonders why he never pieced that together before.

But he does come to a gasping and stumbling halt by the railway track in the middle of the map, leaning on his knees, and thinks about how for the first time since he began this job, he’s looking forward to going home.

It’s cast aside when there’s a rustling in the undergrowth beside him. He’s off like a jackrabbit, startled away from his own thoughts, and tears down the earth as if trying to escape from them. Thudding footsteps behind him are actually what make him slow.

He supposes he is expecting to see Lorne there behind him, and so it isn’t a surprise. What _is_ a surprise is how when Lorne catches up, it’s suddenly like there’s nothing resembling personal space anymore, because Lorne’s sidled up beside him and taken his hand, entwining their fingers together. “Hi,” he says, cheeky and breathless and this close Ashley can feel the heat of him. “Come here often?”


	25. 3: SOON & 4: GIRLS

## 3. SOON

“What’re you doing!”

Ashley jumped backwards like maybe a snake had tried to bite him, which had the added effect of ripping his hand out of Lorne’s. It hurt, and Lorne bit his lip to keep from cursing. “I’m just lookin’ to say hi, what’s the deal?” he said. As soon as the words left his mouth he suddenly found himself wrongfooted, awkward. “I guess uh, I guess maybe that was too much too soon? I can kinda—be that way, and all, y’know—”

“No, just—” Ashley bit his lip, looked away, looked back. “It’s, we shouldn’t be talking, right? Not here. You heard what Spy said.”

Was that all? “Hell, what’re they gonna do, though, fire us? Between us we could probably buy all of West End, we’d be fine, we’d find jobs where we don’t get killed every two days.” He tried again at initiating contact, a more neutral attempt: lightly slugging Ashley’s arm. This time he at least did not pull away. “This damn job gives me nightmares anyway. Spend half my nights dreaming all my worst deaths. That happen to you?”

“Well … sometimes,” Ashley admitted. He cast what might have been meant to be a furtive glance at their surroundings, and then jerked his thumb toward the unlit shadows of the towering, abandoned warehouses littering the territory. “Let’s get outta plain sight, at least, yeah?”

This was fine by Lorne, who trotted after him and managed to avoid challenging him to race toward it. Ash, and the RED Spy, probably had a point about being discrete. Discretion was not one of his strong suits.

The warehouses were mazes on a good day, and they were old, derelict. You could see the stars in the clear New Mexico sky through some of the holes in the roofs and walls, blasted there by rockets and bombs and machinegunfire. Beyond them lay a cliff, and the remains of a skewed, rusting chain-link fence meant to prevent falls. Mostly the fence had just fallen over, with age and weather. It was this that they wound up settling near, on a patch of crabgrass too stubborn to die. It was perfectly dark, and when Ashley dropped to the ground beside him he was close enough that Lorne could feel his body heat.

 

 

 

 

## 4. GIRLS

“So was it I was goin’ too fast before?” Lorne asks, and in truth Ashley looks at him stupidly, with no idea of what he means. Lorne is a dark shape at his side, identifiable mostly by the way he blocks out the landscape beyond him. “Just, before and all, with the touching.”

“Oh,” Ashley says, and tries to remember. “It, um. I dunno. I ain’t never done any of this before.”

“Not even with girls? Most guys I know’ve at least tried stuff with girls.”

“No. I dunno. I never was interested, I guess.” He pauses. “Got in some fights with girls, but that ain’t exactly the same.”

“Ha! No shit? What’s the worst you ever got into it with a girl? My ma, she woulda tanned my ass if she ever even _thought_ I’d hit a girl.”

Ashley snorts, and shifts his weight in the grass. His hand brushes Lorne’s as he does, quite by mistake, and it shoots a heady, nervous kind of sensation through him as he realizes his hand his now resting on Lorne’s. It’s unpleasant, at first. It only begins to settle down when he forces himself to focus on the cliff in front of them, and the sprawling, empty landscape hundreds of feet below. Not empty, no, it teems with unseen life. He wishes he had his camera.

“Her name was Dolly,” he says, thinking back. “She was in the grade above me. I think she was mad at my older brother for somethin‘, they were in the same class, so I guess she figured the best way to get back at him was gonna be roughin’ up my little brother. Dumb bitch, ‘cause he didn’t ever care about us. So, y’know, Salem comes cryin’ to me, ‘Dolly got her friends to beat me up,’ I tell him fight his own battles ‘cause I figure he’s lying, or that maybe he deserved it, I got my own problems.“ He pauses for breath; notices the way Lorne has scooted just a little closer, and wonders what he should be feeling about that. How he _wants_ to feel about it. ”But Dolly’s a dumb mean broad and when that don’t get a reaction outta Casey she just does it again but worse. So I come home from school one day and Salem’s got a broken nose and he won’t tell dad who did it because if dad finds out he got beat up by a girl there’s gonna be hell to pay. He won’t tell me neither, this time, but all his friends are more scared of me than they are of bein’ tattle-tales. So I go and I break Dolly’s nose right back and that’s how I got suspended for the second time. The end.”

“Wow,” is all Lorne says, at first, and the way he says it is sort of … heavy, somehow. “Crap,” he adds presently, and Ashley imagines him blinking with raised eyebrows as he does. “I mean, sounds like she deserved it. Good on you, stickin’ by your bro, Salem? Yeah?”

“… Yeah.”

“You just got the two brothers? I got a bunch. Your other one sounds like an asshole. I guess everybody’s got the asshole brother. Shit, that means you’re the middle kid? I would not be the middle kid for friggin’ anything—”

“Can we not talk about family?” Ashley says sharply, and the self-loathing that sinks over him an instant later is bitter and dense. Lorne has removed his hand, and he feels suddenly cold and suddenly isolated. “At least … just, at least not mine.”


	26. 5: MONEY

## 5\. MONEY

“Well—I mean, yeah, yeah, we don’t gotta talk about that,” Lorne says. There is no relief in the statement, though; the damage is already done, at least for now. Ashley stares flatly ahead and sees nothing of what is in front of him as Lorne continues, “Wanna know why I moved to West End?”

“Sure.”

“Got disowned.”

There is a beat of silence, and the laugh that Ashley follows it with is pure disbelief. “You? No way.”

“Yeah, man,” Lorne says, and he shifts his weight beside him. “Was right before I met you, that’s why I moved to West End. They kicked me out, and I didn’t want to, y’know, if I’d’ve stayed it just would’ve been reminders of how things were, all the time.”

“But … _you_ , though.”

Now it is Lorne’s turn to laugh. “Me what?”

“You’re just. I mean, you fight like a friggin’ nightmare but you ain’t … you know. Everything about you says ‘good kid’ otherwise.”

The crickets keep spinning their night-song. Ashley shifts, pushes some hair out of his eyes, he needs to get it cut. His eyes fall on his … on Lorne, again, who has wrapped his arms around his knees, resting his chin atop. “Got careless, mostly,” he says, and sounds far away. “I dunno, figured I was safe. I just wanted to help, I got all those brothers and my dad’s job doesn’t pay anything decent. I started helpin’ with bills, wasn’t anything to me. Guess it was too much, at the end of it, they started askin’ me where the money was comin’ from. My job, I says, and I’d told them it was like a security kind of job, nothing special. Don’t, y’know, can’t explain respawn to them. Can’t tell ’em hey, yeah, I kill people but it’s alright because they come back good as new.” A pause. “I can tell you, though, you already know. Jesus. That just dawned on me, about how I don’t gotta hide that from you. I have to hide that from _everybody_ but not you.”

Ashley looks for words and finds none. Instead he wets his lips, turning Lorne over in his mind as he is now: quiet, quietly bewildered, within his reach and yet still seeming off-limits. All he says is, in the end, “What happened?”

His words seem to draw Lorne back to earth. “Well,” he says, “they realize it don’t add up, all the money I’m throwin’ around, compared to the hours and what I told them. So they go, what’re you really doing, and I say I can’t, and that—that doesn’t fly.” He straightens up a fraction, pushing the heel of one hand against his eye. “So they think I’m in a gang, or I’m a hitman, or somethin’, I don’t even remember all the shit they guessed. Long and short of it was, if I ain’t gonna be honest with them, I’m not welcome under their roof.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. Yeah, no kidding. So … I left. Got my little place in West End, met you a week later. Probably good it happened over that. They don’t know about how I don’t like girls … they don’t know about that guy I killed either.” When he laughs it is dry and empty. “It was gonna happen sooner or later.”

Ashley is not good with words, not when they have to mean something. He sits there in silence at first, processing everything he had just been told. It is Lorne’s frustrated sigh that moves him to reach out, to lay his hand on Lorne’s upper arm.

Lorne looks back at him, the stars caught in the edges of his eyes. There is the warm, soft sound of a sigh and he leans into it, and when Ashley’s hand slides up and across his shoulders, it seems to do so of its own volition.

The night is dark and the night is peaceful, still warm from the heat of the day. It feels like a blanket or a veil, especially when Lorne reaches out his hand and brushes some of that overgrown hair out of Ashley’s face himself. His fingers have scarcely left his forehead before he leans in closer and kisses him, and Ashley feels his own fingers tighten around Lorne’s shoulder when he does, possessive—maybe even protective.


	27. 6: IDEA

## 6. IDEA

Lorne had a good memory. Lorne could remember all the way back to his fourth birthday, and of getting to go and get ice cream from the soda fountain with his mother. He could recall with perfect clarity the horrified sinking feeling in his gut, that morning he had accidentally killed the boy on the docks.

Ashley’s last name was Hart. That was hard, in a city like Boston, where there were about twenty other entries in the phone book under “Hart.” But Lorne had a memory like a steel trap, even when drunk, and Ashley had once told him in a gin-laden haze that his parents’ names were Joan and Carver. There was only one entry for those names under Hart in the phone book.

RED and BLU let them go home two weeks later, and for the first forty-eight hours Ashley had acted exactly as distant and mean as he had before Lorne had wormed his way into his life. It took those forty-eight hours for Lorne to realize he was still in “team” mode, hunkered down behind the noisy persona he held his teammates off with. Somewhere around the forty-ninth hour, which happened to be smack in the middle of the night, Lorne was woken up by Ashley slinking into his room and sitting on the edge of his bed. Prior to this he had gone back to sleeping on the couch. “Ash?” he said groggily, blinking. The moon ebbed in through the half-drawn curtains.

Ashley flinched. “Oh,” he said after a moment, looking down at him. “Um. Sorry. Didn’t, didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“S’fine,” said Lorne, groping around in the dark for Ashley’s hand. “C’mere, jackass. Thought you’d changed your mind about us.”

“What? No,” Ashley said, sounding alarmed, but Lorne silenced him by pulling him down onto the mattress next to him. “I didn’t mean … sorry,” he tried again.

“Don’t worry about it.” Lorne yawned, waiting as Ash found his way under the blanket. He was not wearing a shirt, he realized with a bit of a thrill. That was exciting. He shivered as the cold air crept in under the comforter, and used it as a very convenient excuse to worm his way up closer against Ashley’s chest. This close he could hear his heartbeat, a steady, patient drum, and his scent filled Lorne’s nose. He settled in again, feeling the sleepiness on his eyes. Mmn. No, not quite yet. He couldn’t sleep just yet. “Ash?” he said again, his voice half-muffled against Ashley’s skin.

“Yeah?”

“I had, um. I had an idea. And it’s maybe a crazy one, and probably it’s none of my business, but I still had it and it’s gonna bug me until I at least say something about it.”

“Okay …?”

“S’about, uh, your brother. Salem?” He felt Ash stiffen, going very still, and grimaced. “And just, how you’ve said a couple times … how he got left behind. Right? He’s still there, too, yeah?”

Ashley was quiet for a long time. “That’s right,” he said presently, audibly uncomfortable. “I dunno if he’s still there. I figure he is. I was seventeen when I ran off, he’s only, what. He’d be fifteen now. Lorne, I really don’t wanna talk about him right now.”

“Okay, but lemme just finish sayin’ my idea first, and then we can drop it. It’s just, uh. I been thinking about it and it’s, it fuckin’ burns me up, thinkin’ about what all you told me. So I thought … you got out okay. Maybe we could get him out, too.”

Ashley shifted, leaning away from him enough to look down at him incredulously. Lorne kept going before he could be stopped. “I mean, between you and me, I figure it’d be a cakewalk. And it don’t, I mean, it don’t sound like they’d miss him any, awful as that is. And I bet I could get my team’s Sniper to help. I think he’d do it.”

Silence, now. Ashley’s heartbeat had gotten loud, quicker. Less steady. “Just an idea,” Lorne repeated quietly. “You don’t gotta say anything about it one way or the other right now. Just wanted to say it.”

“Mmn,” Ashley said, but no more. This was fine. Ashley was warm and smelled pleasant, and when Lorne slid his hand up to run his hands through Ashley’s hair he was met with no resistance. “Lorne, I don’t …”

“Shhh, c’mon. Hey. C’mere.”

Gingerly he tugged Ash down to his level again, playing his fingers down his cheek and jawline. He leaned in close to press a kiss to his skin, and another, and more. Ash shuddered under his touch and surrendered, letting himself be touched and molded and held. He let Lorne nudge his leg between his, hooking their ankles together, and lay still when Lorne’s fingers slid down his side. “You okay?” Lorne asked of him quietly.

“I … yeah. Think so. Keep going.”

So Lorne did. He tried to remember the last time he had necked with anyone, and the only thing to come to mind was a girl from high school, a short relationship that scarcely made it three weeks before Lorne realized he was living a lie. Ash tasted so much better, felt so much better. Sounded better, with his shallow breathing and the occasional sigh, the occasional soft sound caught in his throat when Lorne would nip his lip or lightly run his nails down his back. Ashley made sense to him.

In time, they both slowed, comfortably entangled with the moon spread out over them.

 


	28. 7: NAVIGATION & 8: STAND AND DELIVER

## 7. NAVIGATION

Ashley does not sleep. Lorne does. Lorne is obnoxious like this. Lorne falls asleep with his face half-buried in Ashley’s neck, his arm curled up between their chests. It is just cold enough, now late in the autumn season, that the heat of his body against Ashley’s is not too much to bear. But Ashley does not sleep.

The last two weeks are still a little bit of a blur. He spent most of them thinking himself into circles about what might happen if anyone found out about the nights he and Lorne would steal out alone together, and then drinking himself into a stupor when the thoughts wouldn’t stop. _Demoman_ had noticed this. _Demoman_ had told him he should maybe lay off. That was the evening Ashley started to realize he maybe had a problem, if _Demoman_ was telling him he should be drinking less.

He isn’t really sure what had happened, because it’s more than just the drinking, and he’s realized that too. He thinks maybe Lorne is to blame, because Lorne doesn’t do this shit. Lorne doesn’t get into brawls to drown out his thoughts or drink himself blind to forget, or run and run and run until he’s too exhausted to function. Things that could make him forget the unfortunate fact that he could feel every beat of his pulse in his wrists, his throat. These were previously things Ashley had just sort of assumed everyone did, just in private. But Lorne does not. Lorne just … gets by without it.

It makes Ashley feel inadequate, damaged, to be near Lorne, and yet now that he has him he cannot bring himself to want to be away from him. Not really.

Lorne had said some things, earlier. They were things that scare Ashley to think about, things that make him want to be running, to forget, to drown out.

Against him, Lorne shifts in his sleep. Ashley looks down at him, best he can over his nose, and feels the beat of his pulse. This close it seems to drown out his own, and this thought comforts him. If his own pulse is a faulty compass, then Lorne’s is a lighthouse, flashing steady on a distant shore, and it is by that light that he will chart his course.

 

 

 

 

## 8. STAND AND DELIVER

“I thought about, um. About what you said.”

Lorne stopped mid-chew and stared down into his cereal bowl. It was eleven in the morning. He had been awake for fifteen minutes. He had no idea what Ashley was talking about.

Ashley, for his part, was on the couch again. When Lorne turned to look at him he found him fiddling with his camera, messing with knobs and dials and whatever else you had on something like that. Lorne was not great with technology. Ashley glanced up at him, and Lorne forced his cereal down half-chewed. It scraped. “What’d I say?”

Oh. Wrong answer, possibly. Ashley looked back down in an instant, his fingers slowing on his gizmo. Lorne grimaced, trying to shake off the haze of sleep to remember. His clearest memory was sniping at Ashley for leaving half-full dishes of food in the sink, which had nearly escalated into a fistfight. His next memory, he realized with palpable relief, was of Ash coming to bed. “Oh,” he went on, scrambling to fill the silence, “about, um, about your brother?”

“Yeah,” Ashley said, a little distantly. “Did you mean it?”

“Did I—sure, sure I meant it! Every word.”

“D’you really think it would work?”

Lorne had the “yes” on the tip of his tongue, and in a remarkable display of self-restraint, held it there. He shut his mouth, the gravity of Ash’s question settling over him. This was important. This wasn’t something to go into half-cocked. “Well,” he said, carefully. “Well I mean it’d probably be tricky. And hard, an’ all that. ’Specially since he’s a kid, still, I guess they could maybe go after you for kidnapping if they found out.”

This drew out a black sort of laugh from Ashley. It was uncomfortable to listen to. “They’d love that,” he said, putting his camera down on his lap. “Joan, especially. Fuckin’ harpy woman.” And then, less bitterly, “What’d … where would he go, though? I mean—I mean, shit, I guess I could pay for an apartment for him, couldn’t I?” He said it slowly, a dawning realization. “I could do that. I can afford that. What, what about school? I mean, I dropped out, but I dunno if—”

“Hey,” Lorne said, putting his bowl down, crossing to sit on the couch next to him. Ashley gave him a deer-in-the-headlights sort of look, wide-eyed and bewildered. “That’s, y’know. That’s detail stuff. That’s the kinda shit I’d probably ask Sniper about, if you was okay with it.”

“Let’s—let’s do it. I want to do this.”

“Yeah?” Lorne said, and he could feel the grin overtaking his face. Ashley’s fingers had gone white around the camera. “For real? I got Sniper’s number, I can call him. It might all still turn into a clusterfuck—”

“I don’t care,” Ashley said, looking at him in something like wonder. “Fuck them, I don’t care. I want to do this. I’ve never wanted to do something more in my entire goddamn life.”


	29. 9: LOOK & 10: SOONER

## 9. LOOK

Australia is something like fifteen hours ahead of Boston, time-wise. This is something Ashley has never actually thought about before; he is taken aback, a little, when Lorne says they should probably wait to call Sniper until evening, because it’s probably around sunrise for him right now.

So it’s almost twelve hours of waiting. Twelve hours of sitting around, just _waiting_ , Ashley cannot stand _waiting._ For the first two he paces circles around the house, fidgeting with his camera, picking at scabs, opening the fridge to look inside and shut it again without taking anything. Around the third hour Lorne has apparently had enough, and he harasses Ashley into his shoes and out the door for a run.

Off they go. At first Ashley pours himself into it like a racehorse, blinkered and blindly tearing ahead. It takes Lorne grabbing him by the arm and slowing down not once but twice to make him rethink this. He is not used to rethinking things. It is uncomfortable, he finds, and unbidden Demo’s chastisement comes to him again.

He slows down. He matches Lorne’s jog, effortlessly, and the strides feel strange and alien. Once he almost trips. And he starts thinking again. The thoughts, he finds, feel just as unfamiliar, yet more easily processed, as he puts one foot before the other.

They run in silence for nearly half an hour, weaving through West End, pausing to walk only occasionally. It’s when they stop at a park drinking fountain that Ashley finally puts the thoughts he has been easing through to words. “I don’t think me getting Salem an apartment is maybe the best idea.”

Lorne looks at him from the corner of his eye from where he is bent over the fountain. It is around three’o’clock, and the sun glances brilliantly off the water on his lips. “You ain’t changin’ your mind?”

“No, nothin’ like that. Just, like, if we get him out, and he stays here, in Boston I mean, sooner or later probably someone’s gonna figure out he ain’t where he’s s’posed to be. My family’s a piece of shit but they wouldn’t just go ignore him vanishing.” He feels a sneer pulling at his mouth. “Didn’t when Casey up and left anyway. Posters everywhere, an’ my dad bein’ on the police force and all, they had all these cops lookin’. Sniffer dogs and all, bloodhounds. I remember him saying once he was spending so much time looking because he wanted to beat in Casey’s face proper for disrespecting him like that.”

“… Jesus, is your dad even real?”

It is such a bizarre-sounding question that Ashley’s first instinct was to laugh out loud. The look on Lorne’s face told him it was maybe the wrong thing to do. “Jesus,” Lorne says again, pushing up off the water fountain. “Did … well, uh. Did, did they look for you, too?”

Ashley stares at him. The question has never crossed his mind before.

 

 

 

 

## 10. SOONER

The silence went on a little longer than Lorne was strictly comfortable with. Ashley looked a little speechless. And presently, Lorne just jostled his arm, coaxing him back into a walk. “You hungry?” he said after they had gone a ways, and Ashley shook his head. “Alright, well. Kinda you’re spookin’ me. Didn’t mean to say the wrong thing, ’m sorry.”

“S’fine,” Ashley said distantly. “Mmn. Uh. Surprised me. I was gonna … I had somethin’ else I was gonna say. Oh. Oh um, about Salem, and all. It, we got this, um. This aunt. My mom’s sister. I didn’t much know her, really, but she and Salem are nuts for each other. I guess I dunno much about her, but uh. Maybe … maybe Salem could go stay with her. Maybe that would be okay. Her and my mom don’t talk anymore, or they didn’t when I left.” He bit his lip. “I think she lives in, like, Wisconsin? Shit. This’s stupid, I don’t even know what her phone number is, this is a bad idea.”

“Well—well hey, I dunno if it’s bad. It’s better than anything I’ve come up with,” Lorne offered as they weaved through overgrown bushes, a tiny grove of young elms sprouting up around them. “I dunno, it sounds good to me. I mean, I can’t be trusted with no kids, I’ll tell you that. Don’t want me around him.”

Ashley mumbled something. Lorne glanced over at him, one eyebrow raised, and caught his eye, just for a second, before Ashley looked down again. “… sooner you than most anyone else,” he repeated.


	30. 11: STRAIGHT

## 11. STRAIGHT

The park had been nice. The two of them had fallen into other topics of discussion, more light-hearted than the subject of Salem. What to do for lunch. Where Ashley wanted to go with his new camera film. Lorne was informed that he snored. Something about this made his cheeks flush red—not embarrassment, exactly, but more the reminder that there was someone there to notice that now.

The rest of the afternoon was whiled away. Lorne discovered himself showing Ashley how to make spaghetti (“You gotta add olive oil an’ salt to the water, that’s the trick”), and a little after noon they went back down to the beach, where it was chilly and deserted. Ashley found a crab, and made a huge fuss about forgetting his macro lens at home.

And then, by Lorne’s watch, it finally rolled around to something like a reasonable hour in Australia. There was a minor panic as Lorne did not immediately remember where he had put Sniper’s phone number, and another when they realized that neither of them had ever made such a long-distance call before, and had no idea how it worked. “I mean,” Lorne said eventually, punching in the numbers, “he didn’t tell me I had to do anything special. Maybe it’ll work.”

The joke was, of course, that the number connected to a line in California, where Sniper was apparently staying.

“That’s a hell of a tall order, Scout,” Sniper said after a long pause, once Lorne had rambled his way through the gist of things. Ash had gotten up and left midway through it, only to come back a minute later and start pacing. “Tantamount to kidnappin’, is what it sounds like.”

“Okay, but I mean, like, it’s kidnappin’ for a good cause? Right?”

“Dunno if I’m the right man to be askin’ about moral choices, though,” Sniper mused. “An’ I dunno if BLU would make somethin’ like that disappear for you, with it bein’ off payroll.”

“C’mon, Snipes, I done thought it through and all, this’s real important.”

“How is it you caught wind’a this whole situation? I mean, sounds like you ain’t even sure about where this kid lives.”

Lorne fell silent. Ashley, who had finally dropped down next to him to listen, stared at him. Lorne wet his lips, and raised one eyebrow in question. Hesitantly—and with a single jerky movement—Ash nodded.

“Well,” Lorne said after a too-long pause. “Well uh, y’see, what it is, is, uh. He’s, the kid, Salem, he’s got, uh, a brother. Um. It’s—and, uh.”

The words seemed to keep getting stuck in his mouth. Lorne stopped again, staring in bewilderment at the ground. Sniper was the one person he would have thought he _could_ talk to, about him and Ashley. This thought so preoccupied him that he did not notice Ashley reaching out to take the phone from him until it was already out of his hand.

“Salem’s my brother,” Ash said into the phone, staring fixedly at a spot on the carpet. “I’m Ashley. I’m Lorne’s boyfriend.”

A silence seemed to hang over the whole room, including the phone. Ashley passed the handset back to Lorne, slowly pushing himself up, as if to walk away again—he didn’t, though, on account of how Lorne reached out and grabbed the hem of his shirt. Ash stopped, blinking back down at him—and Lorne smiled.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone. “Yeah, um, that’s about the size of it, that’s—kind of that’s my stake in things here, I guess. Will you help?”

Sniper, presently, snorted. “An’ here all this time I’d figured you’d gone straight on me,” he said. “Bloody hell. Sure. Tell me how to help.”


	31. 12: BLACK EYE & 13: STEP OFF

## 12. BLACK EYE

There is a feeling in Ashley’s chest. Head. Everywhere, it’s just damn well everywhere, and he doesn’t know what it is until Lorne hangs up the phone and beams at him. It’s the same feeling that hit him about a month after he had absconded with his stolen gas station money, and he had been staring out the still-foreign window of his new apartment. It had occurred to him that he had done it. He had made it out. It had been pure, incandescent hope.

He and Lorne had passed the phone back and forth a bit, answering Sniper’s questions. Yes, they can get back to him with an address. No, they hadn’t actually talked to Salem yet, probably they should do that first. Would Sniper, maybe, (Lorne had asked hesitantly,) see if Spy wanted to help? “Not, uhh … not our Spy,” he had clarified. “Unless I am way off about you and, uh, him.”

There had been a stretch of silence. Ashley had heard Sniper heave a long, heavy breath clear through the receiver. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

So: that was the plan. Sniper would talk to Spy. And the Scouts (although, Ashley noticed, Lorne had at no point alluded to who Sniper knew him as) would find and talk to Salem. “Cause I mean, y’know,” Lorne says a few minutes later, after they’ve checked the phone book to make sure the address was the same Ashley remembers, “kinda probably should make sure, uh. That he wants to. Go, I mean. That nothin’s changed?”

Ashley laughs and it is sharp and empty, and pulls Lorne out the door.

They run. Slower, again, like in the park earlier that day, a marathon pace rather than a sprint. It’s a weird dissonance, he finds after they’ve broken out of West End and are making their way through the edge of Chinatown. Prior to the last month and a half, he has had two types of running: mindless maintenance runs, like the train yard, and the hyper-alert dodge-and-weave stop-and-go goal-oriented movement that keeps him mostly alive at work. It’s not often he has to combine the two.

It’s a long way, from West End to Southie. They talk a bit at first, quickly replaced by silent panting that fades away when they slow to walk between bursts. It’s companionable. It’s nice to have a partner. They hit South End before either of them speaks again, and they both, as if in tandem, come to a halting stop before a street marked WILLOW.

“… I ain’t been back here since I left,” Ashley admits. “Shit. Wow.”

“Me either,” Lorne says. “Mm. I mean, that was just a couple months for me, though. Shit. My house is real close by. I hope I don’t see nobody I know.”

“I could give you a black eye,” Ashley offers dryly, and is rewarded with a bark of genuine laughter and a punch to the shoulder.

 

 

 

 

## 13. STEP OFF

It was sheer stubbornness that got Lorne into South End again. Sheer stubbornness had gotten him through a lot, all told, but it was the very same that had kept him away. It was surprising, how much he felt himself balk at returning, and they weren’t even going to see his family. Things were just funny like that, he guessed.

There went Ash, and Lorne followed. Ashley moved kind of like a dog on a scent: purposeful, with more economy of movement than Lorne was used to seeing from him. The deeper they went, the heavier Lorne’s guilt became.

“Where is it they live, exactly?” he said when the silence became too much to bear. It was coming on around sundown now, and Ash was half shadows. This time he balked.

“We passed it a while back,” he said at last. “The house with the blue door. Could see ’em through the window, Joan anyway.”

“What? Well, shit, where’re we goin’ now?”

“You’ll see. If Joan’s home, Salem probably ain’t.”

That was all Lorne got out of him for the next ten minutes. They stole through alleyways and between abandoned businesses, once cutting through a wide, unkempt backyard littered with abandoned gardening tools to reach a shady lane. The sun was almost all the way down by the time they climbed a crooked old chain-link fence, but there was just enough light left for Lorne to discern the goals and the painted lines on the grass. “A soccer field?” Lorne asked.

“He’s big on soccer. Uh. Was, least’a’ways. Had this spot he’d hang out with his friends, it’s this way, I think.”

The spot was a ditch, and the ditch was littered with cigarette butts, candy wrappers, water bottle caps. There was an overturned wooden crate, too, and what looked like half of a pair of garden shears stuck in the dirt, and a dusty soccer ball. Ashley stopped at its edge, frowning.

“Guess he ain’t here,” he said after a minute or two. “Guess I dunno why I thought he’d be. Shit. Geez. Two years, I dunno what he does these days—”

He was cut off, sharply, when something collided with him. Lorne did not get to see what it was, because something collided with him in the same moment, and then quite suddenly he and Ash were in a tangled heap at the bottom of the ditch.

“Thought we toldja to step off our field, dumbasses,” said one of the three skinny figures jockeying for position at the ditch’s edge.


	32. 14: HUNTER & 15: HUNTED

## 14. HUNTER

Lorne had come so close to landing on the shears stuck in the bottom of the ditch that for half a second he thought he was back on BLU. Ashley landing mostly on top of him didn’t help matters. He twisted and kicked Ash off of him a good bit harder than he probably should have, and got cuffed in the face for his trouble.

And … then they were fighting. Probably he should have seen this coming. “ _Stoppit_ ,” he hissed when he finally managed to pin Ash down, and surprisingly Ash listened, but he’d already gotten the busted lip. “ _Shit_. Ugh. Who the hell’re you?” he said, looking back up at the edge of the ditch.

There were three figures, he discovered, hunched together and featurelessly black against the fading sky. Lorne swiped at his bloodied chin and let Ashley up. Ashley stayed where he was. “Well?” he prompted again as no answer came. “You jerks go ‘round pushin’ people for fun?”

“Yeah,” one of them deadpanned. This broke out into snickering. “But you ain’t Hunter Derkins after all, so you maybe didn’t deserve it.”

“They were messin’ with our spot,” piped up another, younger voice. Kids, Lorne realized. “This’s our spot, everyone knows it!”

“Okay, yeah, sure,” Lorne said, and brushed the dirt off his clothes as he shifted into diplomacy mode. “Sorry, didn’t know. New around here. This’s your ditch? Nice digs.”

“Could be better,” the first one said. “It ain’t a treehouse. That’s the good stuff.”

“We just had a back alley when I was a kid,” Lorne said, scrambling up the ditch as Ashley finally got to his feet. Silently, Ash followed. “You should put some umbrellas down there or somethin‘. Guess it ain’t much good when it rains, though, huh? My name’s Lorne, an’ this is—”

“Jacob,” Ashley said. If he had been the sort of person who did meaningful looks, Lorne imagined one probably would have accompanied the statement. As it was the unexpected interruption left him baffled for a good few seconds—long enough, apparently, for Ashley to keep going. “You brats know Salem Hart?”

Silence, at first. Then a third voice, belonging to the skinny middle kid, answered. “Yeah. He’s weird.”

“You know where he is?”

Silence. Ashley took what could only be described as a threatening step toward them: stiff-legged, shoulders hunched. “… He’s at the vacant lot pretty often,” said the first kid. “Over by the old library. How come you wanna know?”

“None of your business, is it? And you better keep your mouths shut I came asking.”

“Uh, Jacob. Jake,” Lorne said, grabbing him by the back of the shirt. “Chill out. Okay? Hey, kids, thanks. We’ll get goin’. Have fun with your ditch.”

 

 

 

 

## 15. HUNTED

“The hell was that about?”

Ashley’s jaw hurts, from where Lorne clocked him in the ditch. It’s not something he’s particularly sore about, at least, but it’s taking him a while to come back down. Old habits. He’s used to being angry about something. “Mouthy kids,” he says, as he leads the way to the vacant lot. “Last friggin’ thing I need is word gettin’ back around to my folks that I’m around here again. Lucky they didn’t recognize me.”

“Well—fine, yeah, okay. Didja have to threaten ’em, though?”

“Only thing they listen to.”

Lorne does not answer this, but Ashley can feel his eyes on him.

The lot is about seven blocks away, and they travel it in silence. It’s dark by the time they get there, with the street lights flickering to life as they pass. The sidewalks are all but empty, with a growing gaggle of old men appearing on fire escapes and front steps with bottles and pipes.

It is all very, very familiar, and all Ashley can think about is how he wants to get away from it.

And then the lot is there. It’s a large lot, mostly unchanged from his memories, though someone has put about three feet of a chain-link fence across the front. It’s weedy and it’s full of garbage and tall grass, and there’s someone sitting with their back to the wall in the far corner.

Ashley stops in his tracks. He is suddenly a statue, a frozen thing. An icy sensation pulses through his head, even when—especially when—Lorne pulls up next to him and asks in a low voice, “Is that him?”


	33. 16: BREATHE & 17: RIP

## 16. BREATHE

“Is that him?” Lorne asked.

Ashley didn’t say anything. The only light was a smoggy streetlight too far to do much more than cast a haze over them; that and a car roaring past, suddenly, headlights blazing. Ash flinched, slightly, and in almost the same instant the shape in the darkness of the lot looked up just in time for the headlights to pass over it. Lorne saw a tousel of dirty blond hair and a blue and white jacket.

A few seconds passed, and it curled back in on itself: a small shape trying to make itself smaller.

Ashley shoved him, forcing Lorne forward a pace. “Go, keep going,” he hissed, urging him on, and, baffled, Lorne obeyed. They stopped only after they were well out of sight of the lot, around the corner of a weary red-brick building. The blackness was deeper here, caught in the shadow of the alleyway. Now he could not make out much more of Ashley than the fact that he was present.

“What’re you doing?” Lorne asked, the words catching on the edge of his teeth and coming out sharp. “Was that him? You gotta talk to me, man.”

A flutter of motion silenced him, Ashley shaking his head and pressing the back of his wrist to his mouth. “Yeah,” he got out eventually. “Jesus, that. Yeah. That’s, that was his jacket, a-anyway.”

Lorne looked him over, best he could in this light, frowning. “Hey,” he said presently, taking Ash by the shoulder. “Breathe, okay? Just, we’ll take a minute. Probably he ain’t gonna run for it in a minute, get yourself together.” Ash grimaced, but did not object. Silence, then, and Lorne could not abide silence. “Cool, um. Okay. Okay, so that was him. That’s great, right? Plan’s going good. We’re—”

“What if he says no,” Ash muttered. “What if he … what if they know. What if—”

“Shut up, you are talkin’ stupid, okay? You’re talking scared, it’s nerves, and whatever, right? Ain’t seen him in ages, ’course you’re psyched out.” Risking a glance down the length of sidewalk he could still see, Lorne exhaled, and slid his hand up from Ash’s shoulder through his hair, till it cradled the back of his head. “ _Breathe._ ”

It took him a while. Eventually, though, Ashley nodded, and let himself lean into Lorne’s palm.

 

 

 

 

## 17. RIP

When Ashley can count to twenty in his head without his thoughts ricocheting off into the blue without him, he decides that’s as ready as he’s going to get tonight. Lorne receives a mumbled _okay_ , and Ashley gingerly pulls away.

Together they step into the light of the street lamp. Ash counts each sidewalk crack, every weed, until they come again to the edge of the vacant lot. The lot which is now truly vacant.

He stares at the spot where Salem had been sitting, the pieces of calm he had managed to collect already flaking away. Next to him he hears a hissed _fuckin’ hell_ , and turns in time to see Lorne trotting out into the middle of the street, looking this way and that. Ash looks, too. There’s no one in sight.

“Scared him off, I guess,” Lorne says, shoving his hands into his pockets with more force than necessary. “Dammit. D’you know where he would’a gone?”

“… Home, I guess,” Ashley says. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know, Lorne, he had to’ve seen me, he doesn’t wanna talk to me—”

“Shut up,” Lorne says again, cutting his eyes toward him. “Quit talkin’ like that, come on. We go look for him.”

This is the worst idea possible, but when Lorne returns to his side and jostles him, Ashley leads the way back home anyway. It is cold, coming well into autumn now, and it occurs to him that he doesn’t own any winter clothes anymore. They burned down along with his apartment. He bristles against the cold, gritting his teeth as Salem’s blue jacket flits past his mind’s eye again. “He wears that coat everywhere,” he mutters to Lorne before he can stop himself. Immediately after he looks toward him and is met with green eyes, watching. “I … forgot about it. I tore it, once, accident, we were fighting over … I guess I don’t know. I guess it was something stupid, but we were goin’ at it and I get a handful of the sleeve and I half rip it off.” The grin he breaks into feels strange. “Turned him into a nightmare. He never was much for, uh, he’s not like me. With the fighting. But he got me for that one,” and he gestures to his left ear. “Came pretty close to rippin’ my ear off.”

“Sheesh,” Lorne mutters. “How come he likes it so much?”

“I don’t … really know, I guess. Joan got it for him, for his birthday one year, I think—”

He is cut off when Lorne stops short, grabbing him by the arm, and points at a hunched figure walking ahead of them some twenty yards away. They watch, silently, until the pedestrian passes under another flickering street light. The yellow light washes out the blue and white of its jacket.

Ashley stares, transfixed once again. Unbidden he remembers the same story he has just told Lorne, a chilly spring day somewhere between home and school; he remembers feeling the seams and stitches give way under his grip, and of almost losing his balance, and of the look of absolute shock and dawning rage on his little brother’s face.

He pushes forward, shouldering past Lorne’s arm, and his runners on the pavement seem impossibly loud. He does not hear it over his own voice, calling out as the figure ahead of him freezes at the noise and turns to look.

“ _Salem!_ ”


	34. 18: WARNING & 19: GOOD RIDDANCE & 20: SOMEONE

## 18. WARNING

When Ashley took off, Lorne had stayed frozen to the spot, startled. He had been anticipating needing to bully him into it. People would always surprise you.

In a flash, though, he was running after him, and the motion must have caught Salem’s eye. A heartbeat later and now  _Salem_ was running, too, making a wild break for it down the street. Salem was short, compared to his brother. And he couldn’t run worth a damn. Ashley caught up to him in seconds, with Lorne hot on his tail. Having caught up with him, though, he didn’t seem to know what to do next. It came down to Lorne scrambling ahead of them and blocking Salem’s path to bring the party to a halt.

There was a hoarse, ragged sound ripping the air up, Salem’s breathing. He was already on the defensive, bristling with his hands curled into fists in the dark, as he wheeled around to try and put his back to the chain-link fence they had stopped next to. And he was talking. “Don’t,” he was saying in a voice that was nothing at all like Ashley’s. “I’m giving you  _one_ warning,  _don’t—_ ”

“Salem,” Ashley cut in again, through panting. “It’s, hey, we’re not—”

Whatever he was trying to say died in his throat, strangled out by a pained shout. Salem had whipped around, and as he did Lorne realized his hands were not merely fists. The dim light flashed off of something small and steely in his grip as he turned. “ _Fuck!_ ” Ashley snarled, staggering back and clutching his arm. “Salem! It’s  _me_ !”

Nothing doing. It would appear Salem had something in common with Ash after all, because the moment Ash withdrew he had whirled back around and slashed his switchblade at Lorne. Lorne, at least, got out of the way in time.

Knives were a problem, but Lorne had not spent his time on BLU in vain. Salem and his switchblade were nothing compared to the RED spy and his balisong. He lashed out with one hand like a snake and got lucky, seizing Salem by the wrist. A twist and the blade clattered to the ground. Salem was silent, still breathing hard, and when Lorne got another look at him his face nothing short of terrified. “Hey,” he tried, loosening his grip enough to not hurt, “Salem, man, chill out, okay? We aren’t looking to hurt you but you gotta settle down.”

“Who the hell are you?” Salem snapped back, trying to wrench away. “How d’you know my name? Let me go!”

“I’m Lorne, I’m real cool and I wanna help you out. And I think you know that guy.” Lorne nodded in Ashley’s direction; Ashley was putting pressure on the messy slash in his forearm. “Or did we get the wrong Salem?”

Hesitantly, Salem turned to look. Lorne could feel it when his terror started to morph into shock. “What,” he started, and swallowed. Lorne let go of his wrist. “What the  _hell?_ ”

Ashley glanced up at him, hunched over himself. “Um,” he started. “Hey. Hi. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

The silence was thicker than tar. Quietly, Lorne bent down and picked up the knife.

 

 

 

 

## 19. GOOD RIDDANCE

The reunion was … messy.

Some of it was what Lorne had expected, going off of what Ashley had told him: Salem demanding to know where he had gone, and what he was doing back here. Ashley answering, sheepishly, omitting plenty of detail. There was more silence than he had anticipated. Maybe Ashley’s way of not talking about anything was hereditary.

“So what do you want?” Salem said at last, curt and on edge. “I don’t have any money.”

“What? No, it’s—it’s not like that—”

“I don’t have drugs either.”

“It’s not like that!” Ashley repeated, a little more sharply. From where he had stopped to lean against the fence, Lorne watched him straighten up. “I just … I wanted to see you.”

Dead silence, again. Then: “You’re an awful liar.”

“Hey, kid, give him a break,” Lorne interjected. This won him a sullen glare. Lorne rolled his shoulders. “Look, you cut him and he’s still not trying to kick your ass. What’re you doin’ with a knife anyway?”

“It’s for in case I get jumped by crazy people. You know, like what just happened.”

Lorne exhaled, long and steady, out through his nostrils. This was maybe going to take some doing. “Okay, how about we start over?” he said, shaking out one hand and extending it. “I’ll go first. I’m Lorne, that’s Ashley, you’re Salem. We don’t want anything except to talk.”

He was answered with an even darker stare. Salem’s eyes flashed back to Ashley. “Maybe I don’t want to talk.”

“C’mon, you ain’t seen him in, what, like two years? There’s nothing you wanna say?”

Salem’s lip curled. “Yeah, okay. How about ‘good riddance’?”

It was almost imperceptible, the change that came over Ashley at this. He slouched by the faintest degree, casting his eyes aside. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, I get it. I’m—”

He was interrupted by the faint clatter of the chain-link fence as Lorne pushed himself off of it. “Kid. Look. Come over here a minute.”

It was an imperative, not a request. Lorne knew about making those, knew the right degree of iron to layer into his voice to hit the no-questions-asked quality it needed to move someone. Nevertheless he was still surprised when, after another long, black look at Ashley, Salem turned and followed Lorne across the street. Lorne looked behind him only once. Ash stood staring after them, every inch of him already defeated.

 

 

 

 

## 20. SOMEONE

Idiot, Ash tells himself. Of  _course_ something like this was going to happen.

He watches in stock-still silence as his brother and his partner leave him. His arm hurts like a bastard; it’s a shallow cut, but that doesn’t make it hurt much less. Seeking distraction he pulls his palm away from the gash, examining the blood smeared across it. In the dim light it is muddy and colorless, like tar or mud.

Of course Salem hadn’t wanted to see him. It wasn’t like Ashley had ever acted like he cared about him before he left. Casey probably would’ve been better received, he thinks bitterly, even though in the pit of his stomach he knows that’s garbage. Casey’s probably dead somewhere. Casey had been on more drugs than Ashley even knew the names of. And Casey had never liked either of them. Ash can count his pleasant memories with Casey on one hand; even Carver and Joan have more to their names than that.

He wonders when Salem began carrying a switchblade. He wonders if maybe he always has, and he just never noticed. It seems likely, but he isn’t sure. Salem had always been quiet and withdrawn; too girly, by Carver’s scathing approximation.

He risks a glance toward Lorne and Salem again. Salem has slouched back against a stop sign, and Lorne is half-perched on a fire hydrant, talking animatedly. He watches them, straining his ears to try and catch what they’re saying, until Salem glances his way. Ash rips his eyes away instantly, this time fully turning away.

This is all happening too fast. Everything has been happening too fast. Two months ago he hadn’t even known Lorne; he hadn’t had more than a shadow of a thought about Salem since he’d left home. He curls his fingers around the chain-link fence and presses his forehead to the wires, trying to understand what had happened. How Lorne had known there was more to him than what Ashley revealed, when even Ashley hadn’t known that. He doesn’t even remember what he used to do every day, before Lorne wedged himself into his life. It was like he hadn’t even been a real person.

He considers this, weighing his past even as he forces himself not to look behind him. No real answer comes to him, just a jumbled collection of memories he has a hard time piecing together, as if they belonged to someone else, and really, maybe they had. He wonders about that, about what it means. Maybe it doesn’t matter what or who he used to be. Maybe all that matters is that now he can be someone else. He thinks he could be okay with that. He already likes whoever he is now more than he liked the thing he had been before.

Good riddance indeed.

Carefully, he extricates himself from the chain-link fence and turns. The anxiety returns twofold when he sees Salem and Lorne crossing the street again. They come to a halt in front of them, and Lorne’s expression is unreadable. “Hey,” Ash says.

Lorne gives him a nod, glancing at Salem. Salem is shorter than Lorne, just barely, but the way he carries himself makes him look a great deal smaller. For the first time Ashley notices the shadows under his eyes, though his brother’s gaze is fixed on the concrete. “Hey, um,” Ash tries again. “Salem?”

Salem’s eyes flit up for just an instant. It’s long enough. “I’m sorry,” he says, the words clumsy in his mouth. “I … I haven’t been a very good brother, is what I mean. You, you don’t have to forgive me, or nothin’ like that. But, just, if you’ll let me—I want to try and make up for it, if you’d let me.”

He gets no answer, not at first, and looks up at Lorne in a mild panic. Lorne meets his gaze, brow knit. They are interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a sniffle. When Ash looks again, he finds Salem with grit teeth, pawing dampness from one eye. And, slowly, he nods. Ash bites his lip, looking again at Lorne. “What the hell did you say to him?”

“Wasn’t me, man,” Lorne says quietly, as he reaches down to carefully put his hand on Salem’s shoulder. “All I did was ask if he’d hear you out.”


	35. 21: MILKSHAKES & 22: OUR SIDE

## 21. MILKSHAKES

“You sure Joan isn’t gonna be on your case?” Ashley asked Salem as  Lorne led their trio over the threshold of the late-night diner he had squandered many a summer evening at when he was younger. “Friggin’ harpy was always up my ass if I was ever a minute late to anything.”

“It’ll be fine, I think,” Salem answered. Lorne listened in absently, scanning the familiar territory. Nothing much had changed since the last time he’d been here, maybe six months ago. It seemed unlikely that he’ll be recognized, or so he hoped. He didn’t recognize the girl behind the counter, anyway.

They slotted themselves into a booth with little fanfare, or rather, Lorne and Salem did. Ash had ventured off to the bathroom, presumably to wash his new cut. (And probably also, Lorne suspected, to stare blankly into the mirror a bit. That was something Ash did with unnerving frequency at home, particularly on bad days.) So that left Lorne and Salem alone again. In the light, Lorne felt a lot less sure of himself than he had when he had tried to talk Salem down.

Salem had been both like and unlike his brother, he’d found out quickly. Salem was a lot more careful with the words he used, and he kind of hunched in on himself, like he was trying to be small. His eyes darted everywhere except over Lorne’s face, both in the street and now. Non-aggressive, except for the switchblade. It was easy enough to pick out the difference between people who _liked_ fighting, and those who fought because they thought they had no choice. Salem was decidedly of the latter.

The waitress came over, to get drinks squared away. Lorne ordered a milkshake, because he wanted something sweet and unhealthy, and after a moment’s thought asked Salem, “You like milkshakes?”

Salem looked at him like he’d just grown another head. “Um … yeah.”

“Okay, three milkshakes, strawberry and what, chocolate? You like chocolate? Okay, two chocolates and a strawberry. Maybe get us some extra cherries too, sweetheart?” he added in his most flirtacious voice. Might as well ham it up for the kid, throw him off the trail. As far as he knew Lorne was just a friend. The waitress, a petite brunette, gave him a wry smirk and rolled her eyes as she left.

Ash came back, finally. And he definitely had the kind of half-focused look on his face he got when he’d been staring into the middle distance for too long. He slid into the seat beside Lorne, and he had barely sat down before Salem jumped up and made for the bathroom as well. Lorne watched him go until he disappeared around the corner. “Was not expecting the waterworks,” he said after a moment.

Ashley seemed to rouse at this. He blinked at Lorne before heaving a sigh. “Oh, that, yeah. Yeah, I guess. He’s kind of always been a little like that, I think. Kind of a crybaby.”

“Worse things he could be.”

“Seriously, what’d—what did you say to him?”

 

 

 

 

## 22. OUR SIDE

Lorne shrugs. This is a little maddening. “I explained a little bit,” he finally admits. “I, uh, I gave him kind of the short version of your story. I maybe made a couple details up, but they were, y’know, educated guesses at least.” He clears his throat. “Might’ve mentioned you were all tore up about not knowing if he was okay, and that was what we’d come lookin’ for him for.”

“Oh,” Ash says. “That’s. Mm. I, I guess so. If it worked, that’s okay, yeah. Did you … did you say anything about, um. You and me?”

Lorne snorts. “Trying to get the kid on our side, not scare him off. ‘Course I didn’t tell him that. Said we were roommates, is all.” Ash goes still as he feels Lorne’s foot nudge his own, hooking around his ankle. “Not his business anyway, yeah? I said we were friends. Heh. He looked real surprised when I said that, too.”

“Yeah, well. All the friends I used to have were worse assholes than me.”

“That’s real impressive. Were they worse than _me_ , though, is the real question.” Ashley snorts, at this, and Lorne’s grin widens. “Yeah, I’m awful. Got you a milkshake, I’m so awful.”

“So long as it’s not vanilla.”

Salem comes back, sooner than Ash expected. He is a little surprised he came back at all. His little brother slips back into his seat, fidgeting with his jacket. “So,” Salem says after a few awkward seconds. “What’d … why do you want to talk to me?”

His answer is probably a little too long in coming. Ash can feel Lorne watching him, waiting to see if he’ll take the lead. He feels like he _should_ take the lead. He is not sure if he can. Perhaps it might be better to get it over with. He is pondering this when Lorne nudges him. “Tell him what you told me.”

What he told Lorne. Shit, what did he tell Lorne? This does not help his delays. Fuck it, he thinks. He’s tired of not facing anything head-on. “We think we maybe found a way to get you away from mom and dad,” he says, in a low enough voice that hopefully no one else can hear. “Permanently, I mean. Or at least till you’re eighteen and then nobody nowhere can make you go back. We’ve got, um. I have this new job. I can’t talk about it, really, but I’ve … we’ve got some friends there that know about stuff like this. But we can’t start nothing unless you want us to.”

There. Fuck. He had stumbled over half the words and now he cannot manage to meet Salem’s eyes, when they shoot up to look at him. “What?” Salem says. “You—what the hell kind of joke—”

A shadow, a clatter. Three tall, frosty glasses brimming with frothy sugar and dairy, each one crowned with a quartet of maraschino cherries. Salem bites his tongue. Ashley finds he is not hungry; he takes his milkshake anyway, listening dumbly as Lorne excessively thanks the waitress. It seems to take her way too long to leave. “Nothing obligating you, I mean,” he continues,  absently stirring his straw through his drink. “You want me to leave and I’ll leave, I won’t bug you no more.”

Faintly he becomes aware that Lorne’s eyes are on him. He hopes it stops soon. “But if you want to go with it, we’ll be there for that, too,” Lorne says. “And you don’t gotta decide right now, yeah? Probably you shouldn’t oughta, anyway. We got a phone number.”

Oh, Ashley thinks. Right. Of course Salem shouldn’t be deciding on the spot like that.

He glances up again. Salem wets his lips, looking between the two of them. He has not touched his milkshake. “Um … okay,” he says. “Okay, I mean. I’ll take … I’ll take the phone number.”

Lorne beams. His hand darts out and plucks a napkin from the dispenser, and then produces a pen from somewhere. He must have brought one from home. Lorne thinks about things like that. “Great,” he says, scratching out the numbers with care. “I won’t put a name on it or anything, play it safe. Just don’t lose it.”

Salem nods, taking it as Lorne slides it across the table. “Are you seriously his roommate?” he says after a moment, and Ashley feels himself seize up. He’s still seized up when Salem continues, “You’re … too nice.”

“What, c’mon,” Lorne says good-naturedly. “I mean, yeah, I am! Thanks for noticing.”

“I mean you’re too nice for _Ashley_ ,” Salem says, deadpan. The way he does not meet Ashley’s eyes does not escape him. “All of Ash’s friends are assholes.”

“Lay off,” Ash mumbles.

“Lay _off_?” Salem says, his voice sparking. “You gonna tell me I’m wrong? The last time I met one of your _friends_ he pushed me into a puddle.”

“What’d … I don’t remember that, what’re you talkin’ about?”

“One of your asshole friends thought it’d be funny if he shoved me and I fell into a puddle,” Salem says, and now he is glaring at him. “I dunno how to make that more clear. You were there. You thought it was funny.”

Ashley stares at him. He is thinking, frantically scrambling through his own mind, trying to remember. He comes up with nothing.


	36. 23: BETTER & 24: NO & 25: 5'6"

## 23. BETTER

Well, Lorne thought, this _could_ be going better.

He sipped at his milkshake, watching the silent stand-off between the two Hart boys. Salem had not mentioned this, in their earlier talk, but in hindsight—it seemed like the sort of thing he maybe should have just expected. Ashley was sort of like that. “He _is_ kind of a jerk,” Lorne said at last, casually. “First time I met him he came beat the hell out of me, him and these racist twits he was hangin’ with. What the hell were you hangin’ with them for, anyway, man?”

Ashley gave him a look that was a mix of horror and betrayal. By now Lorne had learned to tell, a little bit, when Ashley could flat-out not remember something: he could detect the slight panic as he scrambled to recall. “Aw, it don’t matter, though,” Lorne carried on, nudging Ash’s elbow. “People change, right? Ash … he’s, he’s kinda rough but I don’t …”

“Could at least apologize,” Salem muttered.

Lorne shut up, eyebrows jumping. Salem had spunk, he would give the kid that. At once he cut his gaze toward Ash, who still looked shell-shocked. He cleared his throat. “Oh,” Ash said, fumbling over his tongue. “Oh, um. Yeah. Kinda I always was an asshole, that’s, yeah. I’m … I shouldn’t oughta been. I’m sorry.”

The suspicion had not quite left Salem’s face. Not, at least, until the door to the diner opened, and even that was delayed, because it was Lorne and Ash who were facing the storefront. And Lorne would have given it no mind, except at his side Ash jerked violently backwards, pressing himself into the seat. An instant later he had hunched completely over the table, shielding his face from the view of the aisle.

 

 

 

 

## 24. NO

No. No no no _no_ ** _no_** not _here_ not _now_ —

From between his fingers Ash can see Salem, confused, turning to look. He risks dropping a hand from his face to grab Salem’s arm, stilling him. “Ow!” Salem says, trying to jerk away, and stopping when he sees the desperate look Ash is giving him. “What? What is it?”

“It’s _dad_.”

 

 

 

 

## 25. 5'6"

“No fuckin’ _way,”_ Lorne said, a little too loudly. He, too, hunched down onto his elbows. Not suspicious at all.

The man standing in the diner’s threshold was all angles. He was sharp all the way through, with a neat, gold beard and a crisp blue dress shirt. A silver badge on his upper arm flashed in the low light, and a gun hung from his hip. He even had the damn hat. He was unquestionably a police officer.

“What’s he doing?” Ashley hissed, after a few seconds. Across from him, Salem had sunken deep, deep down into his seat.

Lorne risked another look. “Ordering, I think,” he said. “Oh. No, shit, he’s … he’s coming over here, what do we do?”

It was too little too late. Officer Carver Hart came to a slow halt directly in front of their table. Up close, he towered. And Lorne had thought _Ashley_ was tall. Built like a brick shithouse to boot. Well. It was up to Lorne, apparently. “Evenin’, officer,” he said carefully. “What’s the news?”

Carver said nothing. He was chewing on his bottom lip, looking from Salem (who had completely averted his eyes) to Ash, still hiding his face. When his hand shot out and dragged Ash’s head upright by the hair, eliciting a yelp, Lorne banged his knee on the table as he leapt upright. “Hey—!”

“I was wondering when you’d get the goddamn nerve to show your face around here again,” Carver said, his fingers still knotted in Ashley’s scruffy hair. “Was starting to think you finally killed yourself after all.”

“Let _go!_ ” Ash snarled, grabbing Carver’s wrist and digging his nails in. Or he tried, anyway. Carver was altogether too fast for him, lashing out with a backhanded slap across the face before he could get a good grip. “Let me _go_ —”

“What’re you fuckin’ doing?” Lorne cut in, leaning as far over Ash as he could. “You got a warrant? I don’t see no warrant, what’s your fuckin’ problem?”

It was like Lorne wasn’t even there. Carver shoved him aside, hauling Ash bodily out of the booth and sending him roughly to the floor. Lorne jumped out after him a moment later, but before he could even decide what to do another voice had cut in with a wicked, booming _HEY!_

The sharp staccato of heels hitting the linoleum gave way as their owner darted out from behind the bar and stopped a lot closer than even Lorne would have dared. It was the waitress, he realized, all 5’6” of her: somehow suddenly imposing even with her blond ringlets and pink lipstick. She took a threatening step forward and in one surprisingly fluid motion pulled Ashley to his feet. “Sir,” she said, sounding much different than she had a moment ago when taking their order, “I do not abide violence in my store.”

Carver sneered, bristling as he stepped forward until he was practically breathing on her. “You obstructing a police officer, ma’am? That’s my delinquent joke of a son and I’ll handle him how I see fit—”

“Sir, I don’t care if you’re the godforsaken Pope,” she said. “I know my rights, this is my property, and like that other young man said I don’t see a warrant on you. Get out.”

Lorne stared at her. So did Ashley, and Salem. Eventually he thought to look to Carver again, and found his face had turned a livid purple. The whole store was silent.

Then Carver said, in a clear, cold voice, “I’ll remember this, missy,” and left the store. The door fell shut behind him with a sharp clang.


	37. 26: LANGUAGE & 27: HOPE

## 26. LANGUAGE

Later, Lorne would remember a pretty constant stream of words falling from his mouth as he darted to Ash’s side, but none of what he said. Ash, at least, seemed to be okay standing. The waitress was busily brushing him off, and to Lorne’s surprise, Ash was … thanking her. Nothing over the top, just quiet, earnest words of gratitude that quickly faded away as the waitress tutted at him. “Lady,” Lorne said, pulling up short at their sides, “can, damn, I dunno, can I buy you somethin’ for that?”

“You can refrain from swearing in my restaurant,” the waitress said stiffly. “The mouth on you young men these days. There, now, that pig didn’t do you up too badly. If he really is your father I certainly hope you don’t see him often.”

“Not really,” Ash muttered. He was deathly white, save for the bright red mark on his cheek where he had been struck. Lorne had to force himself to keep his hands to himself. “Nnm. No. Thank God.”

“Who freakin’ does that?” Lorne burst out, and felt himself digging his nails into the palms of his clenched fists. “That’s, for crying out loud, thinks he’s so tough, you and me we could beat his ass down in two seconds—”

“ _Language_ ,” the waitress said again, shaking her finger directly in Lorne’s face. “And in front of the kid! Watch it, mister.”

 

 

 

 

## 27. HOPE

Ash can’t help but look toward Salem when the waitress—whose name tag says she is Jade—mentions him. He finds his brother in an uncomfortably familiar state, sitting stiff and painfully still, staring at a single point on the table where Ash’s spilt milkshake has flown across the surface. His face is deathly white.

“Salem,” he says quietly. “Hey. Little man.”

Salem keeps breathing, and that is about all the animation Ash gets out of him. He paws at his face again, frustrated and nervous and a world of other emotions he isn’t used to processing. He glances to Lorne for help, but Lorne is occupied with Jade, counting out what looks like an unreasonably large stack of bills out for her.

So it’s his job after all, then. This strikes him as distinctly unwise. Probably he should not be allowed to interact with Salem. “Um,” he starts again. What would Lorne do?

Well … Lorne would probably say something nice. Lorne would probably try to break the ice with a joke. But Ashley is not Lorne. So instead he just says: “I’m glad he went for me and not you.”

The response is surprisingly immediate. Salem stirs, glancing up at him, and then back down almost at once. “I don’t wanna go home.”

“Yeah,” Ash says with a sigh and a peculiar, painful feeling in his throat. “Well … I’d offer to kidnap you, but I think that maybe wouldn’t work out so well.”

Salem smiles, just the faintest bit. “Your, uh. Those people from your job, can they really …?”

“Yeah,” Ash says, rubbing at his bruising knee. “Yeah, absolutely, they’re kind of unreal. If anyone can make it happen, it’s them … I was thinking we could maybe get Aunt Lyre to take you in? I ain’t talked to her yet, but if anyone’d do it it’s her.”

The spark of surprise and interest on Salem’s face now is more than Ash had dared to hope.


	38. 28: FLUTTER & 29: HAPPY & 30: LOVE

## 28. FLUTTER

The week that follows is surprisingly smooth, like glass. Also like glass, it felt fragile, and frozen, and probably other words starting with F that Ash can't think of right now because he is going a little crazy. 

Frightening. That was another good word.

After the incident at the restaurant, they had seen Salem home, which Ashley remembers as a hyper-nervous blur and Lorne being weird about the fact that people in the Hart family didn't hug. Brothers were supposed to hug at times like these, he'd insisted, and he had insisted so obnoxiously that Ash had snapped, “Didja hug all your brothers when you got kicked out, then?”

Lorne had shut up. Ash had felt a little bad. They had resolved this by going home and not saying anything to each other, but with Ash coming to bed anyway. Hart people don't hug or kiss or do much of anything besides hit, but Ash is thinking:  _If all that's true, maybe I should just stop being a Hart._

All this is to say that they did a lot of kissing that night, and Ash was glad of the distraction.

Today is nearly five days after Salem, and in this post-Salem reality Ash is going bonkers. Sniper hasn't  _called._ Nothing can be done until Sniper gets back to them, he's told them to wait after they got in touch to let him know Salem's address, that he had to work some details out with Spy. So the boys had called Ashley's aunt, too, one Lyre Lyspring, who was a schoolteacher and had a presence not unlike a particularly grand mountain, and she listened to Ash’s whole fumbling explanation in crisp silence before saying, “Ashley, your parents are the rats I always said they were. I'll take Salem. I'll see to it they never find out.” Aunt Lyre was a little imposing on the best of days.

But that was days ago.

“You gotta settle down, man,” Lorne calls to him from across the room, where Ash certainly is not staring at the phone. “Watched pots and boiling and whatever.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Lorne says as Ash begrudgingly crosses to him. “Hey, look, you oughta get your camera stuff and show me how it works and all. The complicated stuff, I mean.”

“Mmn.”

Lorne tells him to shut up and do it, not unkindly. And gives him a kiss, when he does.

Something flutters through Ash’s chest.

 

 

 

 

## 29. HAPPY

Cameras were not really Lorne's thing. They were as still as butterflies pinned to paper and equally dead. But in truth he was as anxious for Sniper's call as Ash was, and if Ash was explaining cameras to him, Lorne had to concentrate. 

That had been the plan. It had been a pretty good plan, in Lorne’s opinion, and then he realized Ash had trailed off. He looked up from where he had been studying the camera things on the ground before them.

Ah.

Ashley was staring at him. “Uh,” said Lorne. “I got something on my face?”

Ash’s cheeks went from tanned to crimson in record-breaking time. “No, what, no. Just. I’m just …” And off again. He looked down at the camera and lenses on the floor and said something that sounded like he was talking around a mouthful of bread. Lorne jostled him.

“Didn’t catch that.”

If possible, Ash’s blushing went neon. “I’m just. Uh. ‘m nervous, I mean.”

Sympathetic, Lorne nodded. His hand reached out of its own accord, seeking out Ash’s leg, and made contact just as Ash blurted, “But I’m just—I’m happy. About—about what we’re doing about Salem, I mean, right, and that your Sniper’s helping us, and that—that I’m here, and … uh.”

His abashed gaze had dropped down to his lap. Lorne followed this as well and found that his hand had not gone for Ash’s knee, as he’d intended, but kind of further up his thigh. Lorne considered this for a moment, and then squeezed.

“Dude,” Ash said, and in the same moment Lorne leaned forward and said, “I’m happy you’re here too.”

They locked eyes for all of four seconds before Ash hooked his arm around Lorne’s neck and pulled him down on top of him.

It was as yet early in the day. Noon sunlight poured in over them, turning Ashley’s straw-colored hair into a damn halo around his face. Lorne got glimpses of it as he kissed him, as he worked his way down Ashley’s jawline and throat. He was stopped by Ash’s fingers insistently yanking his shirt up his back, levering himself off him enough to allow it to be shed. “I see how it is,” he purred, thumbing Ash’s lips. His boyfriend snorted, tossing the shirt to the ground, and Lorne took the opportunity to roll them over while he wasn’t expecting it. The look of surprise on Ash’s face as he found himself on top made him grin. “C’mon, tough guy,” Lorne said, kicking up his legs to wrap them around Ash’s waist. “We both know you can kick my ass, stop bein’ a pussycat.”

“What in the hell does that mean, though?”

Lorne rolled his eyes. “It means kiss me like you fuckin’ mean it.”

“What, like I didn’t before?”

“No, just—”

Ash was fast; Lorne was faster. Lorne, though, was prone and shirtless, and maybe a little vulnerable, and was not actually expecting Ash to use his knees to pin Lorne’s arms to the carpet, nor for him to pull back on Lorne’s hair with one hand. His throat was exposed and the old sense of  _danger, danger_ flooded him immediately, but the pressure on his scalp was not painful and Ash’s warm, sharp scent filled his nose. “Like this?” Ash intoned flatly, and before Lorne could find his tongue Ashley had found it for him, with his own. His free hand drifted down Lorne’s side, down his chest, hesitated at the hem of his jeans, and settled for returning and holding the side of his face. His fingers were rough and hot.

Hard, urgent kisses. In them Lorne could taste something of the paranoia and fear that still lingered in Ashley, familiar in that it had dwelled within Lorne himself for a long time too. Equally familiar was the hunger driving past them, needing to be known. Lorne thought about Ash, about Salem, about what it had felt like to be drowning and to be pulled from the water of Boston’s ocean and to be held until the terror subsided. He thought about the brutal, empty animal Ashley had been just a few short months ago, and marveled at the transformation, at the care with which the young man over him touched him with.

Ashley broke the kiss, his eyes closed, his forehead pressed to Lorne’s. Lorne licked his wet lips.

 

 

 

 

## 30. LOVE

“Ash?”

“Mmn?”

“I, um. I think I love you.”

“… Really?”

“Yeah.”

 


	39. 31: KIDNAP & 32: TOGETHER & 33: DRIVE & 34: LET'S GO

## 31. KIDNAP

So who else but Spy had appeared on their doorstep not three days ago with a fully-fledged plan. “A simple rescue mission,” Spy had said with an unbearably smug look, grinding his cigarette butt out onto an empty plate. He had it all planned out down to the hour. He already knew Salem’s daily routine, somehow. Sniper was out familiarizing himself with the route they’d be leaving by, as the getaway driver. “I scarcely know why you needed our assistance.”

“Insurance,” Lorne said dryly. “Somebody to pin the blame on.”

Spy grinned. “Ah! Then you have very much picked the wrong man. I do not accept blame for anything.”

“Could we quit talkin’ about stupid shit and get on with it?” Ash had snapped.

Three days. Three days and Ash had been absolutely spring-loaded, practically vibrating with nervous energy. It had been hard to sleep next to him, for he’d toss and turn relentlessly for hours, and then pass out on the couch for fitful naps the next day. Finally Lorne dragged him outside, into the crisp autumn air, and ran him ragged. It was how Ash regulated himself, he’d come to realize, running. And as it happened they came to a halt at the same little patch of shore and water near the malt shop where they’d first gotten lunch. “How’s that for memories?” Lorne said, throwing himself down onto the grass, which was even browner and deader than it had been in the summer. “Remember this? Get down here.”

Ash glanced around, from the slope down to the water to the abandoned building nearby, and by his face Lorne wondered if he did not remember. A lot of the little things from the start of their relationship seemed blurry to him, if they were present at all. But he sat, far enough to be publicly decent but close enough to be comfortable, and said: “Woulda won that fight if I hadn’t had those deadweights.”

“Ha! Those two jackasses? Yeah, you know what, I’ll give you that, clumsy idiots. Gettin’ in your way.”

“I don’t even remember why the fight started,” Ash admitted, sheepish. “Uh. Glad it did, though.” He lifted his head, and Lorne caught his tentative smile. He smiled back. “Hey,” Ash went on, looking down again. “Do you really think this whole thing’s gonna work? With Salem?”

“Sure, why not? Things are gonna be fine,” Lorne said, surreptitiously letting his hand drift down to rest on Ash’s knee. “There won’t be no trouble.”

“There’s always trouble with my family.”

“Quit it. What’s your shithead family gonna do against all four of us, call the cops? TFI takes care of it. No problem.”

 

 

 

 

## 32. TOGETHER

Lorne hadn’t damn well understood, was the problem. He doesn’t know about Carver, he doesn’t know about how he’s insane and full of himself and would rather throw his own kids under the bus than let someone take them away. “He’s gonna figure out it’s me,” Ash says. He’s picking at the dead grass, blade by blade, the motion somehow soothing. “If he hadn’t seen I’m still around, maybe, but he’s gonna figure out I’m the reason Salem goes and vanishes, and then he’s gonna tear the city apart.”

“Then we’ll leave the city.”

Lorne says it like he’s observing the weather. Ash’s head shoots up; he opens his mouth to answer, and it doesn’t go quite as planned. Nothing comes out. He tries again. “We’ll—we can’t just leave—“

“Why not?”

“You … you just got that apartment, didn’t you, yeah? And your, your family—“

Lorne smiles at him again; he shakes his head. “I told you they don’t want to see me, they ain’t gonna be bothered if I move. It's not like I can't come back, anyway. ‘Sides, I’ve always lived here, I ain’t getting any younger. We could go anywhere. Hell, we could go live on some island. Be lighthouse keepers!”

The idea is so foreign to Ash that he cannot formulate a response. Aside from working for RED, he can count the number of times he’s left Boston, let alone Massachusetts, on one hand. The very concept of just …  _leaving_ —and moreover, the fact that Lorne is completely right that leaving would be the safest option—

“Bet we could get Spy to leave some fake leads, even,” Lorne carries on. “Make it look like we went to Canada.”

“I dunno.”

But Lorne had squeezed his knee, and Ash looks up at him to find him smiling. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out together,” he had said, and Ash thought maybe his heart skipped a beat.

 

 

 

 

## 33. DRIVE

And then, they go home. The night drags on forever, until it is finally time to meet up with Sniper, and then Ash keeps wanting to ask if they’re speeding. Everything seems to be happening too fast. They are crowded into the back of Sniper’s van, Ash and Lorne, with Sniper driving and Spy in the passenger seat, and the driving is giving him motion sickness and this is a terrible idea and Carver’s going to find out and—

“Ashley?”

He looks up, he sees Lorne’s face, and it’s cast half in shadow. It makes Ash think of the night they found Salem, when Ash panicked, of the alleyway. “What?” he says thickly. 

“You okay?”

“M’fine.”

Lorne squints at him, just a little. But he doesn’t question it. “Okay. Okay, well, I think we’re just about there. Just passed Belfast street. Just a grab and go, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And if he ain’t there we check the house.”

“I know the plan, Lorne, I ain’t stupid.”

A frustrated sigh answers him. “Sorry. Sorry, you’re not stupid. I’m just a little freaked out too, you’re contagious.”

“Sorry.”

“Shut up, dumbass, I said it first,” Lorne said, ruffling his hair.

Ash’s seat on the floor of the cabin is not comfortable. Lorne had claimed the bed, and they sit facing one another. In Ash’s hands is his camera, something he’d grabbed on a whim on his way out the door—something comforting to hold on the way, maybe. He’s been fidgeting with the few dials and buttons on the thing the whole way, until the car bumps under them, sending Ash floundering for a hold. Of course he grabs Lorne’s leg first. 

Ash’s first instinct is to let go, but he doesn’t. A lot of his first instincts are garbage. He holds on instead, and says, “Did you mean what you said about leaving, yesterday? Just up and going?”

“Well … sure, yeah.”

“What if we did that, no matter what happens tonight?” Ash swallows, tightening his grip on his anchor. “Just go somewhere else, like you said. Lighthouse keepers. I’d … I think I’d like that. I think I should get away from here.”

All is quiet, for a moment. Ash is a little afraid to look at Lorne’s face, like he’s said something stupid. There is warmth on his hand, then, as Lorne covers it with his own. His expression is deathly serious. Ash feels his whole body tensing.

And Lorne says, “Only if I can drive.”

“You—what?”

“I wanna drive. I always wanted to drive on a road trip and I ain’t never gotten to.”

It is here that Ash bursts into laughter that is far too intense for the situation, all his nerves and fear crystalizing into this one reaction. But Lorne starts to laugh, too, and half-kicks him in the leg before Ash grabs his hand with both of his and pulls him down to the floor. When he tells Lorne he can’t drive anyway, never learned how, his boyfriend crows in victory and kisses him. “Then screw it, we’ll go,” he says. “Get a car wherever your aunt lives and just wing it.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay.”

When the van slows to a halt five minutes later, Ash finds himself with a clear head again. He’s on his feet as soon as he feels the van lurch with a gear shift, putting it into park, peering out the tiny window onto a dark road. A pool of light from the streetlamp is all that lights the darkness. And Lorne is there, shouldering for a view, and says, “Right on time.” Ash looks again, and catches sight of the small figure trotting toward them.

The van’s back door is thrown open before Ash fully processes what he is doing, and then he realizes he is the one that opened it. The autumn air bites at him as he trots out into the street, and is greeted by the sight of Salem jogging forward. “Hey,” he calls in a stage whisper, his attention suddenly locked to his brother, faintly aware of a presence at his back. Lorne, he thinks. “C’mon, we got the van, you ready?”

Salem comes to a halt in front of him and does not at first answer, panting and looking over his shoulder. Ash looks, too, more nervous than he would care to admit, but there are only shadows. “Yeah,” Salem says finally. “Um, I don't think anyone noticed me going.”

“Good, great, great, let's go,” Ash says as Salem turns back to him. He feels dizzy, electrified, hyper-attentive to a single thing, like he's in a fight again. He hasn't been in a real fight in a while, it occurs to him. Not since Lorne—

The blow to the back of his shoulders comes at the same moment he realizes Salem is yelling something.

 

 

 

 

## 34. LET'S GO

Ash didn’t drop, and that was the only reason Lorne didn’t instantly realize something was wrong. The light was at the wrong angle. He had been looking at Salem. Carver Hart was wearing dark clothes. But he heard Ash grunt in pain and stagger, only to fall forward when his father shoved him to the pavement. “Well, well,” he heard Carver drawl as he brandished his nightstick. “The prodigal son does return.”

Lorne all but leapt out of the van, bristling, all five-foot-seven of him ready to fight. Carver didn’t even dignify him with a full look, just glancing at him from the corner of one eye. An ugly grin drew itself across his face, humorless. “Oh, and you brought your buddy. Listen, carrots, I’ve got some real good advice for you. Take your ugly truck and walk away right now.”

“Hey, sir, look, all due respect and all that, which isn’t any, by the way, so fuck you.”

Carver snorted. On the ground, Ash was picking himself up. He dropped again when Carver lunged forward and kicked him, eliciting another pained, choked noise and a panicky flinch from Salem. Lorne snarled. Lorne jumped.

Lorne, it turned out, was ineffective against a nightstick to the stomach.

“Jesus, you little cocksucker, at least pick your fights,” Carver said thinly, watching as Lorne staggered back against the van and tried to find the air that had been forced out of him. Why hadn’t Sniper or Spy stepped in yet? Could they not hear them over the engine? Were they in a blind spot? “Why are you hanging out with this queer anyway, Ash?” he went on. “This your girlfriend? I always knew you were a faggot.”

He tried to punctuate the final insult with another kick, but this time Ash scrambled clear. Then he was on his feet again, and in the faint light he cut an uncomfortably familiar figure to Lorne: shoulders set, fists clenched, bleeding where his jaw had hit the cement. “Lorne,” he said, “you okay?”

“Just—just winded.”

“Get Salem.”

If he could have run, he would have—the distance between himself and Salem was negligible. But he was hurt and he was made of glass and there was no way he could get past the Hart patriarch like this. Carver seemed to agree, because he turned his baton on him again. Despite himself, Lorne cringed.

The sound of the stick hitting flesh interrupted the quiet again, but this time Lorne felt no pain. He opened his eyes to find Ash’s back before him, a living shield, his hand wrapped around the baton. Then he twisted his wrist, sharp, tearing it out of his father's hand in a single motion. Carver stopped short, surprise plain on his face.If Ash noticed, he made no indication of it. “Go home,  _sir._ ” The last word dripped out of his mouth like poison.

Over Ash’s shoulder, Lorne saw Carver sneer. “You gonna hit me with that? You think you got what it takes?” He took a step forward. Lorne bit his lip and felt his pulse in his throat. And Ash did not give up his ground.

“Go  _home_.”

Carver swung his fist, fast and fierce. Just as quickly Ash threw up the baton, deflecting both it and the second blow he threw. A punch glanced off his knuckles, skimming his shoulder. He ignored it, like Lorne had seen him ignore so many strikes before, and shoved forward. Carver was caught off his guard, wheeling back. Lorne shook himself, looking toward Salem, who stood frozen in the streetlight. “Kid!” he hissed, gesturing him over, and that broke the spell. Salem broke into a run.

Carver bellowed something, roaring like a bull, and in the edge of his vision he saw him laying into Ash again. He took or deflected every hit, right up until Lorne hauled Salem up into the camper. With another curse, Carver tried to break through, and this time Ash struck back, driving the baton into his groin.

Carver dropped. Slowly, Ash straightened up, and his knuckles were bloodless around the nightstick. Lorne scrambled into the van, and behind him he could hear Carver spitting curses as coughed and tried to get up, he could hear Ash’s slow footsteps as he slowly stepped away. When Ash glanced behind himself and met Lorne’s eyes, it took every ounce of his willpower not to run to him. When Ash gave him a shaky smile, the dam broke.

As soon as Lorne lay hands on Ash’s skin he felt the cold sweat there. “Not such a tough bastard after all, yeah?” he asked, and Ash snorted. And kissed him. It was a hard, possessive kiss, one that startled Lorne into curling his fingers into Ash’s shirt before closing his eyes and falling into it. It didn’t last long at all, but the thrill lingered as Ash pulled away and looked to Carver again. The man was huffing and puffing, disheveled and ugly with hate, giving them the most disgusted look imaginable. Ash grinned, dropped the nightstick to the ground, and pulled something out of his pocket. His camera.  The flashbulb burst in Carver’s defeated face.  _Snap, whrrr_.

Ash lowered the camera. “C’mon,” he said to Lorne, and it was as if that single word animated him, breathing more life into him than Lorne had ever seen. “Let’s go.” 


	40. EPILOGUE

##  **_EPILOGUE:  
_** THE WAVES THAT TOSSED THE RAFT ALL NIGHT  
HAVE SET YOU ON DRY LAND

 

 

“Dude, I think your aunt is crazy.”

Ashley lifted one eyebrow as he glanced at Lorne. He had been half-asleep, lying in the sunny spot that pooled over Lyre Lyspring’s living room couch, and Lorne’s stage whisper was not very subtle. He pondered this for a moment before looking over the living room itself, which was decked out in nothing but pink and lace and tacky photographs of cats. “Yeah,” Ash admitted. “She pretty much is.”

“I guess you gotta be a little crazy to agree to kidnap your nephew,” Lorne mused. He was sitting on the ground, alternating between finishing up packing and playing with his keys. His new keys, his brand-new car keys for his brand-new Chevy Camaro, cherry red with white stripes, which was sitting in the cold, early light, just in view of the window. “But seriously. She talks like she’s, I dunno, outta the military or something, then we get in here and she decorates like _this._ ”

“She is outta the military. Air force, I think.”

“No friggin’ way!” But Ash just laughed and sat up. Lorne shook his head. “Sure hope Salem doesn’t get too sick of it. Even his bed’s pink.”

“Nah. I gave him some money to redecorate with, he’ll be okay.”

Getting the money had been a trick, admittedly, given their decision to leave town at the last minute. And they’d had to pick up Ashley’s other camera things, and Lorne had some favorite shoes he refused to leave home without. That had taken an extra day, and Sniper and Spy had given them hell about messing up the schedule. Lorne had reminded them that they had completely failed to hear the fight with Carver, and also screw them, they had probably been mackin’ in the front seat or something. But they had gotten things settled, and a few hours later found them on the road to Wisconsin. Lyre had welcomed them with a barn to hide the van in (something about this had impressed Sniper very much) and a very stern talk about expectations. _You’ll visit your brother at least every six months. You’re always welcome here for holidays, unless you go bad on me like your parents, and then you’ll never see either of us again. And if you’re going to get into fights then I’m going to teach you how to do it properly._

Lyre was definitely crazy, but it was a good kind of crazy.

A week had passed, which saw Salem getting settled into his new room. Ash and Lorne had been given the spare bedroom, and Ash had never quite figured out if Lyre suspected what was between them or not, but he had enjoyed the deep calm of falling asleep to only the sound of Ash’s breathing. Between Lyre’s connections from being a long-time and well-liked resident of the community, and Spy’s general Being-Spy-ness, a plan had been worked out for integrating Salem like he wasn’t a kidnapped refugee, and then a backup plan had been made, and a backup plan for the backup plan. Ash was not quite sure what those were, but he figured they knew what they were doing. He was just glad it was over with.

Well. Not quite over with.

The final hum of a zipper being closed and a “You ready, man?” got Ash back up on his feet. He stretched, looked around at the pink horror of his aunt’s decorating sense one last time, and nodded. Outside, Lyre and Salem were examining the yard, pulling out weeds and raking leaves. Spy and Sniper had left yesterday, though not without Ash’s abashed if heartfelt thanks. Sniper had said he wasn’t going to go easy on him the next time they went into work, and that they had better remember to check in with TFI wherever they ended up if they didn’t want Miss Pauling on their asses. Spy had, shockingly, shaken his hand, and called him respectable.

The brand-new Chevy Camaro with cherry red paint and white stripes gleamed in the sun as the boys stepped out onto the porch, what little luggage they had slung over their shoulders. Rakes and trowels were put aside as Ash’s family came to say goodbye, Lyre with an approving nod and Salem with a surprisingly fierce bear hug. Ash surprised himself by returning it. “Lyre says you have to come back,” Salem reminded him.

“I know. We will.”

“Lorne too?”

Ash glanced at Lorne, who grinned. “Listen, you can’t get rid of me. I’m your weird uncle now.” And Salem grinned back.

When he and Lyre disappeared back into the house, the two scouts tossed their bags into the back seat, and Lorne hopped into the driver’s side like a kid with a new toy. Which was what he was, really. Ash clambered into the passenger’s. The engine purred to life, and he heard Lorne exhale. They drove in a peaceful silence until they reached the edge of Lyre’s little town. “So,” Lorne said as they hit the highway, “Where we going?”

“You’re driving.”

“Mm, yeah, but you gotta tell me where to go.”

This seemed fair. Ash hummed to himself, watching the roadside go by as they picked up speed. The empty fields were dusted with frost “Somewhere I can take good pictures,” he said finally. “Somewhere we can go running and just—just have it be you and me.”

Lorne beamed. “I like the sound of that. Think we’ll know it when we see it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” Ash shifted in his seat, thinking, thinking about his future for the first time in a long time—their future. It felt unreal and electric and unlocked something weird inside of him. “Hey—hey, do you remember what you said? The day before Spy and Sniper showed up?”

Lorne’s memory never failed to impress him. “Uh—haha, oh. That, that I love you…? Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “You didn’t really say anything after that. Kind of freaked me out.”

“It freaked _me_ out,” Ash said with a snort. “But I’ve been, uh, thinking. About that, and us. And, just, you know. Me too.”

The car was quiet, just for a moment. In another moment Lorne would burst into teasing him, warm and relentless, but those few seconds, where Lorne’s whole face seemed to light up and glow, that was when Ash knew he was right where he was supposed to be.

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finally finished!
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who left a kind comment on this work--it was a long road and sometimes I didn't think it'd ever get finished! Thank you so much for your patience. Life's been busy.
> 
> The epilogue art was contributed by the wonderful [Ari](https://wonderarium.tumblr.com/). If you like music, you can find the playlist I listened to while I wrote Monachopsis [on Spotify,](https://open.spotify.com/user/theoldaeroplane/playlist/1k9DQuLk7qta8WondV2zrD) and you can find some bonus art and writing of these boys on [my Tumblr.](http://theoldaeroplane.com/tagged/monachopsis)
> 
> Go forth and prosper!


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